A lesson for Lightfoot in the lingering Smollett controversy
Veteran media blogger Robert Feder posted a few “pro tips” Monday for Chicago’s Mayorelect Lori Lightfoot from a group of local TV political reporters.
To sum it up: Remain accessible and transparent in your relations with the media; don’t spout canned soundbites; try to get back to reporters well before their deadlines; don’t use the Freedom of Information Act as a delaying tactic; and don’t fret about winning each news cycle.
Solid advice, to which I’d add this: Hire the best communications team you can find.
Bring into your inner circle experienced, personable, industrious, thick-skinned spokespeople who accept that negative coverage is sometimes fair coverage, and who know that the only proven way to mitigate the damage of bad news is to get out in front of it with complete and truthful answers delivered with as little bitterness as possible.
You’re going to get hammered from time to time. It comes with the territory. A good communications staff won’t hammer back but will keep you focused on tomorrow’s stories, columns and editorials. They will serve as strategists, not just mouthpieces, and will be unafraid to tell you when you deserve the brickbats.
Listen to them. You may get hammered a little less often or at least a little less severely.
Too many pols don’t seem to appreciate this. Either they hire inexperienced, chippy, reflexively combative public relations staffers who think “no comment” will help make a tough story go away, or they hire savvy ones and then ignore their counsel.
Consider the Jussie Smollett controversy that’s continuing to make news and may seriously hamper Cook County State’s Attorney Kim Foxx’s re-election chances next year.
It was always going to be a big story — when a TV star alleges a sensational, hate-inspired attack against him, police investigators subsequently allege he staged the whole thing and prosecutors abruptly drop all charges at an “emergency” court hearing, the headlines write themselves. But the reason it’s a lingering, festering story has been Foxx’s failure to implement a solid communications strategy.
Her explanations for why her office decided to ignore the grand jury indictment in a case that initially embarrassed and mortified Chicagoans have been various and sketchy. And her decision to embrace the idea that related criticism of her is rooted in racism has been inflammatory and has cast her entire justice-reform initiative in an unflattering light.
I don’t know whether Foxx has gotten lousy PR advice, isn’t paying heed to good PR advice or is simply staggering through this imbroglio on her own. But however it’s happened, this has become an object lesson in how not to roll out a challenging narrative.
Through her press office and occasionally directly she has given unsatisfying answers to specific questions and ignored follow-ups. In so doing she’s left the story littered with question marks instead of periods.
Years after Smollett and Foxx have been otherwise forgotten, professors of marketing and communications will be teaching this story to their students in the what-not-to-do unit.
Madame Mayor-elect, you had an effective, responsive campaign press team. That augured well. Here’s hoping you recruit the best and brightest political spokeswomen and spokesmen to help guide you through the months and years ahead.
I won’t mention any names, but just ask around.
I will add, though, that I plan to remind whomever you hire that on Jan. 30 you were among the seven (of 14) mayoral candidates who pledged that, if elected, you would sit down for regular grillings by panels of journalists. WTTW-Ch. 11 volunteered half an hour of airtime a month for such sessions.
And I will also add that I hope your media advisers break you of the habit of using the word “fulsome” to mean “very full,” as in expansive or comprehensive.
Last Sunday you asked for “a transparent and fulsome subjectmatter hearing” on the Lincoln Yards and The 78 project tax subsidy proposals. Earlier this month you said Foxx owed Chicago a more “fulsome” explanation of how her office handled the Smollett case. You also cited the need for “a fulsome grand jury report” in a federal reinvestigation of three Chicago police officers acquitted in state court of covering up the actions of another officer in the shooting death of Laquan McDonald.
Word nerds are cringing. As the late lexicographical pundit William Safire wrote in the New York Times in 2009, since the 16th century, the primary dictionary definition for fulsome has been “‘satiating, cloying, excessive.’ Shakespeare used it often, meaning ‘loathsome’ and ‘rank with lust.’ The Oxford English Dictionary defines its application to language and style as ‘offensive to good taste ... from being ‘overdone.’ Now chiefly used in reference to gross or excessive flattery.”
“Fulsome praise,” for example, is oleaginous and sycophantic in the formal sense, not enthusiastic and abundant.
Language lovers will take your side, I admit. They will say that usage dictates the evolution of our tongue, and that only fussbudgets will grouse that the same process that is transforming “enormity” from a word meaning “great wickedness” into a fancy synonym for “very large” and has blurred the useful distinction between “uninterested” and “disinterested” is having its way with “fulsome.”
But as a member of Team Fussbudget, I hope you come around to joining us.
Terms of endearment
One more language note. I found myself in an extensive and heartfelt wrangle on Facebook recently after I objected to a printed reference to Amy Eshleman as Lightfoot’s “spouse.”
The news archives suggest that Lightfoot prefers “wife” — though her responsive press team told me she’s OK with either term — and that writers very seldom refer to the wife of a male public figure as his “spouse.”
To me, the gender neutrality of “spouse” suggested a discomfort with gay marriage and implied a certain otherness. But to those who are quite possibly more woke than I, that same gender neutrality suggested a healthy rejection of sex stereotypes and an inclusive, welcoming attitude toward a variety of intimate partnerships.
“Husband” and “wife” have their own particular cultural weight, after all. Not every couple wants to carry it.
I’m interested in what LGBTQ couples have to say about this. Help break the stalemate and write to me!
Re:Tweets
The winner of this week’s online reader poll for funniest tweet is “Welcome to adulthood. You now get mad when they rearrange your grocery store,” by @AbbyHasIssues. To receive an email alert after each new poll is posted, go to chicagotribune.com/ newsletters and sign up under Change of Subject.