They Do Read News

Tip of the hat once again to PRSA's daily Issues email for this one, an interesting study reported in TIME about the news habits of millennials.  One could argue, that's a bit self-serving - a news organization that says counter to stereotype that millennials are into news.

In some ways, its generational biased, both ways.  Of course a minority of any group is keenly aware of the news -- a "surprising" finding by TIME.  But I can dig up stories from the 1940s where the current generation was worried about the lack of knowledge of the generation fighting the war.  Or the 1960s.  Or the 1990s.

The one constant:  Kids these days.  Get off my lawn.

And, here's a little something from Pew that speaks to that consistency . . .

Crisis Social Must Read

The Chronicle has a nicely sourced story about the perils of when your school is in the cross hairs of national negativity.

This line echoed in my head as we approach the one-year anniversary of the great helmet cross event here at A-State.  The person quoted is from Kansas, during the Mark Roth NRA tweet episode:

"We had talking points," recalls Timothy C. Caboni, vice chancellor for public affairs. "But the majority of callers were so irate there wasn’t an opportunity to give a response."

Literally, that's what it was like.  They didn't want to hear reason, or talking points (well, most didn't; those that did, it was truly retail, one-on-one PR).  They wanted to scream and know you took it.

Similar experience previously at Northwestern State with a meltdown of the Banner system (excuse me, Elucian) that resulted in student refund checks being extremely delayed.  It was social media triage, but in the end, we gained some advocates to fought other complainers for us.

The key takeaway in this story also rings true to personal experience:

Ignore at Your Peril