The Latest LDWW Lowdown – Q&A Series with Top Communicators

Our latest edition of the LDWW Lowdown Q&A series with top communicators, we feature Scott Goldstein, chief of policy and communications for Dallas Mayor Mike Rawlings. Scott is a former reporter and digital content editor who now handles all communications, media and visibility efforts for the mayor’s office. Check out the short video piece and excerpts from the full video Q&A interview for great advice from Scott on emphasizing relationship building in your career, the continued influence of media relations in a rapidly changing media world, adapting to the future of tech-driven communications, and the importance of hearing from trusted leaders early and often in the face of a crisis. And much, much more! Really great read!

Q: What is your favorite thing about your job?

SG: My favorite thing about working for the mayor of Dallas is probably the different types of people we get to meet and interact with. You have to pinch yourself sometimes when you find yourself in a room with important players in the city. And being a part of projects, initiatives, ordinances and policy matters that are probably going to reshape the city for hopefully generations to come. So, just being a part of the decision-making process in a small way and the messaging at this time in the city’s history is really exhilarating and very interesting.

Q: Since coming into this position, what has most surprised you about what you’ve learned about planning and development in terms of the city itself?

SG: Well, the city does a whole lot of planning. I think what surprised me about the city is how much I didn’t know—you know, I was a reporter before I came. I covered the city, I covered police department, and I covered City Hall. I think reporters tend to think they know a whole lot of what’s going on but even the best reporters tend to know really a small fraction of what’s really going on behind the scenes, how many people are involved, and even the skill level of the people. It’s such a massive operation with 13,000 employees, and there’s a lot of really strong, really talented people who could be working probably elsewhere and maybe making a lot more money but are really committed to public service. So, I think it was a really positive awakening for me to get to know a lot of people behind the scenes and the executives and be a part of that.

Q: So, you bring up your journalism background, in the early days of your career, how did you first decide that that’s where you wanted to start out?

SG: Well, I’d gone to the University of Maryland journalism school, so I pretty much thought I wanted to be a journalist from at least around high school. I just committed to it and majored in journalism and thought I wanted to be a newspaper reporter. I worked at the school paper at University of Maryland, The Diamondback, and I worked my way up to editor-in-chief. I interned at The Boston Globe, The Chicago Tribune, and The Richmond Times Dispatch. I actually got a one-year internship at The Dallas Morning News out of college. Being from Maryland, Texas was probably the last place I thought I’d end up, because I had a lot of misconceptions about the state like most Northeasterners. But it was an opportunity, it was 2006, when even then there weren’t a lot of newspaper jobs for folks coming out of college, so I took that opportunity. I figured worst case scenario, I’m there for a year, and if I don’t like it, go somewhere else, and best-case scenario, it turns into a full-time job. And luckily it did; I worked for a little over eight years at The Dallas Morning News covering police, courts and Dallas City Hall, among other general assignments across the city and region.

Q: So, how did you make the transition? Because I know you were digital content editor also, right?

SG: After about eight years at the paper, I decided for a variety reasons that I wanted to try something different, and I saw public relations and communications as an opportunity and a logical transition. I know a lot of people from The [Dallas] Morning News and other media outlets in Dallas that had made the transition. Actually, a former TV reporter friend at the Baylor Hospital system let me know about a job opportunity as a digital content editor for Baylor, and it seemed like a logical step. If I was going to make my way into communications, this was a position where I could still do writing, editing, content generation and social media and sort of learn corporate communications. So, I got that opportunity and left the paper in 2014 to go work at the largest not-for-profit hospital system in Texas.

Q: How did you then make the transition to where you are now?

SG: So, the Baylor job was a great job—I enjoyed it—but about seven months in, the mayor of Dallas, who had known me from my previous job at the newspaper, had some openings and he knew I had gone into communications and reached out. I knew City Hall really well from my time as a reporter, and I knew all the council members and all the key players. The opportunity to come back there and work on the other side was an exciting opportunity, not the kind of opportunity that I felt like I could pass up or one I would probably get again, because with time the elected officials would change, and I would probably lose the connections that I had. So, I saw it as a quick step-up in the communications realm, having left the paper and then working as a digital content editor for about seven to eight months at Baylor. Being able to jump in and be a part of the mayor’s office in Dallas was an exciting opportunity for me.

Q: What would you say to the idea, not necessarily just in this field but just in general, about making contacts and how it obviously helped you get to the mayor’s office, they knew you, just in building those relationships from early on in your career?

SG: I think that if you want to go into communications and you don’t necessarily go the path that I did of being an actual journalist, you need to experience media and journalism in some form, whether it’s an internship or working for a media company, even on the communications side. I think being around journalists—and certainly working as a journalist—you make tons of connections from all the stories you write day in and day out, and all the different people you talk to, come across and see your bylines over the years. So, for me, it was a smooth transition for both PR and communications jobs that I worked, because I had known so many people. I had grown my rolodex over the eight years of being at the only daily newspaper in Dallas. So, it really made it smooth. Then having been around politicians for an adversarial role as a reporter but not burning any bridges, with most of them at least. So, I had that relationship with the mayor and with the elected officials that I work most closely with now in this job. To me, it’s been a really logical career progression, and I have no real regrets about leaving the journalism business, but I also wouldn’t be anywhere near where I am on the communications side if I hadn’t spent eight years as a reporter.

Q: What would be your best piece of advice to somebody who is kind of a few years younger in that same situation, they’ve been in one career field and they want to still use the skill set, but maybe transition to something new. What would you tell them?

SG: When you’re a reporter, you kind of have this adversarial mindset, so I guess I would tell them to think long-term. It’s a tough time to be a journalist; it’s never been a great career in terms of making money, but it’s a tough time particularly for newspapers that are struggling. But just as always, don’t close any doors, and think about different ways that you can use the skills that you cultivate at a journalism institution. The industry, in both journalism and communications, are changing so rapidly in how we communicate news and information. As I was coming up, when I got to The Dallas Morning News, there were no blogs that were run by the paper yet in 2006. They started launching dozens of them and social media hadn’t taken off as a mechanism for distributing news, so I looked at that period as a great opportunity to learn all different platforms. That’s definitely more so the case now for anybody in journalism to just master every tool that is unfolding; some of them will disappear but just having the flexibility to learn all different ways to communicate would be a great benefit whether you’re going to stay in journalism or make the transition like I did, because you are going to need to know these—master all of these tools on either side.

Q: In your history in journalism you obviously covered crime but on the flipside, you had to deal with the aftermath of what happened when some of the Dallas police officers were killed. Obviously, it’s a difficult situation but what did you learn from that situation in your role now?

SG: Yeah, well I was lucky in the sense that I worked for a mayor who understands how to deal with crisis and had dealt with several crises before that, including having people diagnosed with Ebola in our city a couple years before. Chief David Brown was the police chief at that time; he was a 30-year veteran of the Dallas Police Department and was a native of the city and fully understood the city that he served. He was also a master of how to deal with crises because he dealt with major crises in his life. But for me—and I think the two of those leaders shared this sense with me—in a situation like that, especially in the first hours when we didn’t really know if there were multiple shooters or if this was an unfolding terrorist attack, we didn’t really know if it was an ongoing threat to the public. We all felt that the public needed to see the faces of their trusted leaders—the mayor and the police chief—and needed to see them quickly and regularly for updates, and I think we delivered on that. We held regular press conferences and we had constant updates through social media and other means, and the international media came in very quickly because five officers were murdered that night. One thing I learned is that even if you come out quickly and give all the best information you have at the time in a crisis like that, you will be largely forgiven if some of it is not fully accurate or some of it is incomplete. If the public knows that you’re trying to be transparent and you’re trying to convey a sense of calm, you’ll be forgiven for getting something wrong in such a chaotic situation. There were mistakes made in what was communicated early on, but people don’t really, for the most part, remember that now because they remember that we had strong leaders, the police chief and the mayor, and other elected officials all out there and conveying a message of calm, and then the days after, of unity. We had President Obama come in, and we had former President Bush, who lives in Dallas, come into a ceremony a few days later. We had a vigil a little less than 24 hours after the shooting. The shooting happened on a Thursday night, I believe, and there was a massive vigil the next day at noon just a few blocks away, where people from all over came. I think that was partly attributed to how we responded in the immediate aftermath to show that this wasn’t going to be like the Kennedy assassination. It wasn’t going to be a stain on the city for 50 years. And I think that was in a lot of people’s minds too; we weren’t going to let this mass murder of police officers be what characterized Dallas for the next 50 years. And it hasn’t. If anything, I think people have seen a very positive side of the police department and leadership and the people out of that horrible tragedy.

Q: Being on the PR, communications and marketing side, what is your advice to those in PR on working with the media?

SG: I think that you have to be proactive with your relationship building with reporters, even though people talk about maybe the mainstream media or the legacy media companies not having as much influence or the type of influence that they used to have. I don’t necessarily agree with that, I mean if you look at it, The Washington Post, The New York Times and the major networks are still day in and day out driving the news cycle. I think that you have to still be kind of old school in how you build relationships with the reporters even though there’s fewer of them in most cases. You’ve got to build those relationships with the reporters that cover your area or would be covering your area in a time of crisis. Because if you don’t have those relationships built, you don’t know who to call when something goes terribly wrong or when you’re responding to good or bad then, and you’re going to be in a bad situation. So, I would really caution people against overlooking that aspect of media relations that I think has been there for a long time, and it’s changed, but it still is critically important.

Q: How do you prioritize your time between proactive positive communications efforts and reactive reputation defense efforts?

SG: Well, in my job working for the mayor, there’s limited time for the proactive side of it, because there’s so much that’s happening day-to-day, from crises that will pop up to unexpected news stories. But I think that it goes back to the relationships, because if you have reporters that know you and that you trust and they trust you, they’re going to be coming to you for the proactive story ideas. So, a lot of what we do is if the mayor has a big speech coming up, two weeks from now and then, we might go with the most logical reporter and work with them on getting some one-on-one time with him. And this mayor makes it somewhat easy in a sense that he has a real appreciation and respect for journalists. There’s hardly ever a question that he won’t answer, for better or for worse, so getting reporters in ahead of major speeches or major policy initiatives is a fairly routine thing for us. It’s usually more of a question of time and what else has popped up to steer reporters away from a story. But again, it goes back to having those relationships on a day-to-day basis where you’re not only talking to them when it’s for a story, but you’re also having coffee and lunch, and keeping in touch with them. This is coming from working at the daily newspaper. I know a lot of reporters who I worked with or acquaintances of people I’ve worked with. So, that’s really the key, it goes back to those relationships. 

Q: What do you wish that you could do more of in your job now?

SG: In this job, again, it’s a pretty small staff for a mayor of a city this large, with only five or six people that work in the mayor’s office itself. From a communications perspective, I would say having a long-term communications strategy. We always feel like we’re kind of drinking from a fire hose. The longest we can plan for is a week or two out. So, having time to think and really strategize long-term about our key messaging is probably what I wish we had more time to do. I’m sure that the mayor himself probably wishes we could talk about that more.

Q: As communications, as digital and social and marketing, that whole space continues to converge, how do you think that all these different pockets can best work together to support an organization’s goals?

SG: Well, I think it’s more important than ever to break down the silos and for the marketing, communications and content generation sides to be working together. I mean that’s probably always been a challenge for large organizations, but nowadays, when you need to get a message out, you don’t really have a lot of time to navigate bureaucracy; people want information instantly. If it’s a crisis—if it’s like a video that’s been posted online—every minute you wait to respond is going to make it exponentially worse. So, I think that anybody who works in those spaces at a major company, there needs to be core values and core strategies that everybody buys into long-term. Otherwise, when you need it most, you’re going to fail in getting your key message out. So again, just breaking down those silos is probably more important than ever.

Q: If you look at the landscape of communication and journalism 10 years ago, obviously so many changes have happened. Looking in the ways technology has grown if you look 10 to 15 years down the road, what do you envision for the future, what do you think it will look like?

SG: Well, I don’t know what it will look like 10 to 15 years down the road, because, I mean, it’s going to be fascinating what it looks like two years down the road just with the direction that everything’s going. I don’t think any of us would have thought that every individual citizen could do a live broadcast with the push of a button on their phone by 2018. I don’t know exactly what it will look like, but again, it goes back to making sure that if you work in the space, that you’re keeping on top of every new tool that’s developing and mastering it right away. Because it’s evolving so quickly that you’re going to lose value as an employee, as a communicator, if you’re not really in tune with or don’t hire a lot of people who are in tune with all the new tools or social media and communications that are constantly being released and constantly evolving.

Q: To that point, what would your message be to those who feel like, “Oh, I’ve learned everything?”

SG: They’re wrong. I think, especially nowadays, there’s just so much more to learn. That’s another thing I wish I had time for—to really delve into new technologies and new tools that folks are using, not just to communicate, but to track communications to kind of get feedback on communications and really monitor where and how my boss is covered. I get it through different sources, but I wish I had more time for that. But yeah, I think anybody who’s in communications or journalism or marketing who thinks they’ve mastered it all, has definitely not.

Q: For those who are just starting off their career or maybe who are still in school and trying to figure out exactly what they want to do, when you look back, what skillset now and with the landscape being the way it is now, what are the things now that you think, ‘you should know this’?

SG: Well, it’s probably still for me, with the print journalism background. It probably tends to be the more veteran reporters or the reporters who kind of typically had a niche over their career, but it’s also communications professionals who have a specific niche over their career who don’t broaden their horizons. You know, the best example over the last decade is social media and people in newsrooms or at communications firms who kind of blew it off for several years. I remember when Twitter was first emerging and being used as a journalism, news gathering and news reporting tool. There were a lot of people that I worked with that just laughed at it and thought it was a waste of time. And then those people two or three years later were using it more than anybody else. So, I would just caution against that level of arrogance toward any type of new platform or new technology even if it seems to be very niche at first.

Q: What trends are you seeing in communications that interest you the most?

SG: Marketing and communications professionals doing their own content generation. It’s not new, but it’s still evolving and kind of different in how it’s presented and the line between communications and traditional journalism. Also, just how we use the fact that every individual citizen can be a citizen broadcaster; somebody who has five Facebook friends, if they get the right video, could have five million hits overnight, depending on if they pulled their cellphone out at the right time. So, just being able to manage and respond to that and also use that in positive ways is definitely something that I think communicators and people in this field are still kind of figuring out.

Q: In your view, what is the biggest blind spot or missed opportunity for most corporate communications professionals or organizations?

SG: To me, it’s just evident on a day-to-day basis that people and corporations don’t plan well for a crisis. Some clearly do based on stories we’ve seen on the news recently, but some really don’t. And I think part of that goes into having core values that the company and its employees understand and believe in. If you have core values that you can fall back on that are strong and that the leadership believes in, in a time of crisis, you put that out front even before you know all the facts about what’s happening and can find yourself in a much better place. So again, a company can be doing extremely well, and one bad story could change everything depending on how they handle it. So, just having a plan on how to manage a crisis, and like I said, long-term having a vision and key values that everyone buys into really play into that as well. 

END.