This post concludes this week’s series by Adam Pagnucco:

For politicians, operatives, advocates and basically everyone seeking to get out a message, the new era without abundant mainstream media has both good news and bad news.  Let’s start with the latter.

The Bad News: You have to work a lot harder to get your message out and be noticed.

For those of you who long for the days when legions of press would show up to hear about your new office furniture, those days are forever gone.  Consider one of the most infamous figures in recent Montgomery County political history: Ruthann Aron.  The trials of this former politician and planning board member who was accused of trying to hire a hit man to kill her husband transfixed the County in the late 1990s.  Recently, Aron called a press conference to trot out her new book in which she alleges betrayal by her defense lawyer.  Only one reporter from Bethesda Magazine showed up.  Horrified, Aron squealed, “Where’s the Associated Press, where’s The Washington Post?”

There are 188 members of the General Assembly and many more city, county and municipal elected officials in Maryland.  In its current shriveled condition, the mainstream media might have fewer than a dozen reporters who regularly cover government and politics in the entire state.  There simply aren’t enough reporters to go around.  Unless they are doing something extraordinarily good or extraordinarily bad, elected officials below the statewide or executive levels are unlikely to get much attention from the mainstream press unless they work hard to get it.

The Good News: You have more control over the content of your message and who receives it.

For those elected officials, operatives and candidates who are prepared for the new world, the absence of mainstream media is not so much a problem as it is an opportunity.  An unprecedented number of tools are now available for direct communication with the public: email, Twitter, Facebook, blogging and digital ads, to name a few.  Many of these tools can be targeted to very specific audiences.  None of this was possible fifteen years ago when politicians had to rely on newspaper reporters to get out news about their activities.

The gatekeepers to the public are almost gone.  In a way, it has never been a better time to be a politician.

The key to truly excelling in this new environment is to understand how the remnants of the old regime and the tools of the new world interact.  The old regime was top-down: politicians and the press at the top sending news down to the public at the bottom.  The new system is more organic, interrelated and even amoebic in form.  Everything affects everything else.  There is little structure.  Unpredictability is the rule.  What used to be big might have little impact now.  What used to be small can become big VERY quickly.

Consider the following alternative scenarios for how information can flow in this new world.

1. An article about Politician A and an issue he is working on shows up on Bethesda Magazine’s website. It circulates on Facebook and Twitter.  Politician A blast emails it and gets an advocacy group to do the same, which gets the attention of the reporter.  This generates a follow-up in Bethesda Magazine.  A gets a two-fer.

2. Politician B is working on another issue but can’t get any reporters to pay attention to it. So B takes out a Facebook ad on the issue and gets hundreds of likes and dozens of supportive comments.  A blogger also covers it and B tweets and reposts it.  B goes back to the reporters and says, “See?  It’s hot!”  Stories are written and reposted on Facebook with more ads to beef them up.  Now the issue is starting to move – and so is B.

3. Advocacy Group X is all over Issue Z, starting up an online petition and Facebook page to push it. Politician C finds out and gets on board.  Boom – Group X lets their supporters know that C is their hero, and C gets both supportive Facebook posts and good press.  Other politicians get jealous and jump in to grab pieces of the pie.

4. A group of politicians decides to team up against a common rival. The rival has a larger social media presence and official communications staff than any one of them.  But the group has regional diversity, many Twitter and Facebook followers between them, several blast email lists and a willingness to coordinate.  Each of them puts up social media posts that take on the common enemy.  The rest of the group then retweets and reposts, rotating between lead and supporting roles.  Coordinated blast emails carrying the content go out.  The group members take turns buying Facebook ads and digital ads promoting their statements.  Particular issues get hashtags.  Helpful activists, party sites and other groups pitch in and spread the messages even further.  The official media picks up on it and spotlights the campaign, amplifying it further.  Soon enough, the T-Rex is surrounded by velociraptors and the pack closes in.

Dealing with reporters is still necessary since they haven’t (yet) entirely disappeared.  But success in the new era depends on integrating the old tools with the new, amplifying the effects of both and building communication scale.  Those who master these arts will inherit the new world.  Those who don’t will fade away with the old, just like the ill-fated T-Rex above.

What are the consequences of the disappearance of the Gazette and much of the local media?  Here are a few.

1. An Information Vacuum

This is the most direct and obvious consequence: there are fewer objective news stories produced about state and local government.  Many things happen now without any public attention.  That’s a challenge for both elected officials and the public.  Here are a few comments from our sources about this new era of media darkness.

Elected official: “I think the lack of local coverage creates a huge disconnect between state and local elected officials/government and the governed.  It is particularly problematic in our area where there is such attention paid to the federal government.  I believe the lack of coverage is affecting voter turnout because people don’t know who their councilmembers or legislators are or what they do, so they don’t care enough to vote.  It is also difficult to publicize good initiatives or issues with no press coverage.”

Elected official: “The most immediate impact is the simple fact that our constituents, particularly the less social media savvy folks, simply don’t know what’s going on in Annapolis and what we’re doing here as their elected representatives, good and bad.  This is particularly problematic in the DC media market. The Sun still has some meaningful coverage of Annapolis, the Post does not.  The Gazette was helpful in bridging that gap to some extent. If folks don’t even know what we’re working on, the ability to have any meaningful political dialogue with the community takes a big hit.”

Elected official: “An already opaque legislative process is becoming even harder to follow. To be sure, The Baltimore Sun still provides political coverage, and websites like Bethesda Magazine and Maryland Reporter are filling some of the void. Even so, there are fewer media eyes on Annapolis these days, and so lots of important legislation dies without any discussion and bad legislation advances without scrutiny. This also means that lobbyists who are paid to closely follow legislative activities have new advantages, especially if the bills they are working on are relatively low key. The upshot is that all this puts a premium on legislators directly talking to constituents through social media and other means.”

Advocate: “The State Highway Administration recently pulled the RFP for the construction of the Watkins Mill Interchange. This is a road project that has been on the books and fully funded for many years and the number one road priority of the County. This would have been front page news for the Gazette and at least one letter to the editor.”

2. Less Accountability

With fewer stories produced, there are fewer opportunities for voters to read about eyebrow-raising activities by public servants.  Stories like the Gazette’s report on tax liens against County Council Members, an allegedly secret contract circulated inside the council and a questionable, high salary job in county government are less likely to be written.  What’s going on now that we don’t know about?

3. The Rise of Government Media

The Montgomery County Government now spends over $5 million a year on County Cable Montgomery (CCM), its in-house cable channel, and Montgomery Community Media (MCM), a non-profit providing public cable access.  CCM’s full-time equivalent employee count (15.9) likely exceeds the size of Bethesda Magazine’s reporting staff.  Both of these outlets provide a mix of public information and what are essentially public relations pieces for county elected officials.  Neither of them would dare to undertake the investigative reporting described above for fear of funding cuts.  While they provide some useful information to the public, they are no substitute for an independent press.

4. Falling Voter Turnout

Voter turnout declined in MoCo gubernatorial general elections in both 2010 and 2014.  Turnout fell in the primaries too, from 138,914 in 2006 to 113,173 in 2010 to 110,602 in 2014.  The latter year had contested primaries for both Governor and Executive.

Could declining state and local news coverage be contributing to this?  There are probably several factors responsible, including increasingly targeted election campaigns.  But if voters don’t know their elected officials, don’t know what they’re doing and don’t know their rivals, they are going to be less likely to show up at election time.  Or if all they hear are negative things spread through social media and attack websites, they could react by passing term limits.

5. It Might Not Be All Bad

One journalist who covered the county many years ago told us this.

“Hmmm … I guess it could go either way: 1. There’s a reason it’s called the fourth estate. The media is there to keep politicians accountable and make sure they are being truthful, etc. 2. Without all of the grandstanding and manipulation of the media that I witnessed in MoCo, things may actually run more efficiently!”

And you thought we were spreading doom and gloom!

We’ll discuss how to adapt to this new world in Part Four.