In almost every community with financial or political challenges, local officials will feel the temptation to respond to trouble with a feel-good public relations campaign.
It’s a foolish idea.
In a town like my town of Whitewater, Wisconsin, that favors local orthodoxy, the temptation is nearly irresistible.
There are three problems with officials’ use of a PR strategy: (1) it wastes time that should go into reform, (2) it distracts people from uncomfortable truths of local life, and (3) public relations is done so poorly in Whitewater that officials media efforts only undermine the diversionary case that they want to make.
Despite all the arrogant self-confidence from officials in Whitewater, this is a group that presents a poor case, and fails – startlingly and often – to understand the obvious, embarrassing implications of their own messages.