A How-To on Managing the Message

Before I came to Columbia J-School and to News21, I worked in public relations for international corporate and political clients. So I was interested to see how some schools in the charter school movement use corporate and political image management strategies to sell, promote, and protect their brands in the new public education free market. And I thought reporting on this topic would shed a light on how journalism gets done in this age of overkill media management.

It’s no surprise that charter school advocates are very image and media conscious. After all, the most widely known and arguably most successful charters today are those wedded to the marketplace idea of school reform. The National Charter Schools Conference held 11 workshops dedicated to advocacy and media engagement and the sessions were well attended.

I attended one workshop that caught my eye when I was going through the conference’s program. It was titled: “Are You Ever Really Off-the-Record” and it focused on how charter schools can avoid negative media stories.

The session was led by not-the-cartoonist Gary Larson, a public relations consultant who works with the charter schools in California, and Stacy Rivera of the Colorado League of Charter Schools. Many of the participants in the workshop were exasperated with the media’s portrayal of charter schools in their local communities.

A charter school administrator asked Larson about how to deal with a story accusing his school of skimming, or only accepting students who are academically desirable and rejecting students who are not.

“If you are accused of skimming, find those kids who weren’t performing well and now are. And pitch those stories,” Larson told the participants.

In response to a question from another charter school administrator who was not thrilled about an education reporter covering her school, Rivera gave the dismayed official some advice.

“I started with a reporter who hated charter schools, but I cultivated a positive relationship with her. I got two front page stories out of her,” Rivera told her. Rivera said she would have lunch with the reporter many times and called her frequently. Rivera also encouraged the workshop participants to do the same but she stressed: “Meet them for lunch, not buy them lunch.”

Mashea Ashton, who works with the Newark Charter School Fund and National Alliance for Public Charter Schools, came to hear Larson and Rivera speak because she didn’t feel she had enough training in, “staying on message.”

As the workshop wound down Larson told the charter school leaders, that they should not repeat negatives or problems about their schools to reporters when they were asked questions that might make their schools look bad. “Don’t,” he emphasized.

Don’t, be honest?