The Case For New Media
I was going to write a post about the Atlanta Federal Reserve — their fantastic Web site and even better blog. However, I think I’ll address a larger issue: “Why New Media?”
I had a conversation recently with someone who works in marketing. She’s done work for companies, but she mainly works with regional nonprofit organizations. She told me that one of her most difficult tasks is to convince the nonprofits she works for that they need to advertise. Their attitude, she told me, was “If we have good programs and good services, people will just come. We don’t need to advertise.”
Now without getting too deep into the issues surrounding nonprofits, I think we can definitely draw parallels between them and government in general. Both exist specifically to serve the public’s interest, and both, traditionally, do that through offered services. But how is the public made aware of those services? Does supply create its own demand? I can think of many local nonprofits whose attendance has dropped year over year specifically because they don’t advertise, and more who try to raise money through special events but fail because they don’t advertise those either.
New media addresses this issue by making advertising cheap, easy, and targeted. A really great example of targeted advertising in government is http://www.usajobs.gov/. All it is is a searchable classified ad newspaper section with a specific audience. Easy and accessible. Or, perhaps a state or federal agency is working on something really cool (like sending people into space) and wants to 1. show the public that their money is well spent and 2. build interest in youngsters for specific career paths. Or maybe a state or federal agency is working on something that is really important (like global warming or local conservation efforts) and want to let people know how they can help. Agencies with similar goals should use new media to build awareness and get people involved and excited about the things that they’re working on.
New media can also help aggregate information down from the federal level. State governments and local governments need to publish information relevant to their populace. This means that the federal government needs to get better at making information available (whether that is online or through official government channels makes little difference, though for transparency’s sake online is preferable) and that state governments need to get better at talking to their constituency. Newspapers and local blogs/Web sites also play some role here obviously, but they should not be the only access points to information.
People are starting to get the conversational aspects of new media (Senator McCain did a Twitterview with George Stephanopoulos), which is why I’ve downplayed it here. But government needs to help start those conversations by giving us all something to talk about. New media, in its various forms, is where they need to be.
