Sports

Engler Aide John Truscott to UM: You're Doing Media Relations Wrong

October 01, 2014, 4:29 PM by  Alan Stamm

John Truscott of Okemos, Mich., knows more than a bit about dealing with the news media when things are tense. He was Gov. John Engler's communications director and press secretary from 1990 through 2000.

He stayed in the game by becoming a Lansing public relations and government affairs strategist, currently as president and co-owner of the Truscott Rossman agency.

That makes Truscott, 48, a savvy observer of newsmakers' behavior under fire, and he's not shy about calling out what he sees as a foolish stumble this week by the University of Michigan.      

At his agency's blog, Truscott comments Wednesday on a statement from the athletic director posted at 12:52 a.m. day earlier:

When the University of Michigan athletic department put out a release in the middle of the night, reporters and editors caught it and weren’t fooled by the "old" trick. 

The complete disintegration of the football program was exacerbated by this attempt to hide the concussion story and coaching decisions.  And the digital media folks ate it up – or more accurately, feasted on the athletic department.

Instead of burying the story, they generated huge headlines for the morning news.

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John Truscott: "We'll see if they learn from the mistake."

In the post-midnight announcement, Dave Brandon apologizes "for the mistakes that were made" near the end of at last Saturday's football game, when woozy quarterback Shane Morris returned to the field. The move "was not in the best interest of one of our student-athletes," the athletic director adds.

The ex-governor's spokesman thinks UM tried what he calls "an old trick in the PR world" -- a ploy its first-year communications students would have scoffed at.

In the current media-driven world, there are no timelines. Digital and online outlets don't have natural deadlines because you don'’t need to get it to print or on the air. It's a 24-hour news cycle and news time is any time. . . .

The old rules don't apply. You have to understand how the new world of media works and deal with it. They’re not going to change because you’re one of the most storied athletic programs in the universe. If anything, the media loves to be a giant-slayer, then they'll kick you when you’re down.
This was a tough lesson for the University of Michigan and we’ll see if they learn from the mistake. Big-time athletics is a huge enterprise, so you better understand the new media world and use it to your advantage. 

Truscott, incidentally, isn't kicking his alma mater. His communications degree was earned in East Lansing (MSU, '88).


Read more:  Truscott Rossman


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