Do you read me?

As the authors of public affairs materials — fact sheets, news releases, policy papers and more — we are given the assignment of being comprehensive while being clear and concise. Simple is hard.

Professional writers often get caught walking the “readability” tightrope, balancing between being “too complicated” and accused of “dumbing it down.” Keeping the audience in mind always is the best gauge. That always will help in deciding the level of detail and complexity you may get away with in any document.

Of course, there is the Flesch-Kinkaid two-tier scale of readability developed by the military in the 1970s. The Reading Ease score indicates how easy a text is to read. A high score implies an easy text. The Flesch-Kincaid Grade level indicates the grade a person will have to have reached to understand the text. 

The scoring goes something like this: 

•  90.0–100.0: Easily understood by an average 11-year-old student;

•  60.0–70.0; Easily understood by 13- to 15-year-old students; and 

•  0.0–30.0: Best understood by university graduates.

The average reading level of Americans is between eighth and ninth grade. 

Somewhere I heard we should be writing for the level of a sixth grader if we want to be understood. That’s 90 points or higher. For good or bad, that doesn’t seem to be happening in the public affairs world, or even journalism.

Here’s my quick, random readability survey of local writers. Using Flesch-Kinkaid, John Canzano of The Oregonian was the most readable:

 • Mayor Sam Adams: An e-letter sent last week about the Education Urban Renewal Area was ranked at Grade level of 14 with a Reading Ease score of 33. 

•  The Oregonian’s lead story May 21 about condors was ranked at Grade level 11 with a Reading Ease score of 46.

•  KGW website’s top story about a murder at a Hillsboro home was ranked at Grade level 10 with a Reading Ease score of 46. 

•  John Canzano, The Oregonian’s sports columnist writing about Twitter hate mail directed at Steve Blake for missing a three-pointer at the buzzer was ranked Grade level 10 with 
a Reading Ease score of 52.

• This Managing Issues blog last week on strike communications was ranked at Grade level 11 with a Reading Ease score of 42.

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Old Media Wins Election Audience Share

It’s as if someone bellies up to the bar next to you and says, “I’ll have an Old Style.” But this isn’t a request about a favorite beer, but how thirsty news consumers want their election news.

People who closely follow election news prefer to get voting results by “old media,” such as cable television, according to a story reported by National Public Radio. The NPR report was based on a survey of more than 1,500 persons by the Pew Research Center. It showed that more than one-third of Americans are leaning on cable channels for election news — just as many as in past years — while relying less on local television stations, newspapers and the national networks, NPR reported. 

Social media has been much heralded but relatively little used by average voters, according to Andrew Kohut, president, Pew Research Center. “And the new media kids on the block? The media may be fixated on them,” Kohut told NPR, “but the public is not.”

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Clicks of Consequence

We’re all overwhelmed by too much information in the new digital age. The cure for too much information is dieting, developing the discipline to restrict what we consume on a daily basis.

That’s the subject of a new book entitled The Information Diet, written by Clay Johnson, the founder of Blue State Digital. They are the folks behind the online strategy for the 2008 Obama campaign. Scott Simon of NPR interviewed Johnson last Saturday. (Click to listen.)

Johnson makes the case for more "conscious consumption" of news and information.

In playing out the diet theme, Jonson compares information overload to overeating. Johnson tells Simon: "Our bodies are wired to love salt, fat and sugar. ... Our minds are really wired to be affirmed and be told that we're right. ... Who wants to hear the truth when they can hear that they're right? Who wants to be informed when they can be affirmed? What we do is we tell our media that that's what we want to hear, and our media responds to that by telling us what it is that we want, and sometimes that isn't what's best for us."

Johnson recalls his experience working on Howard Dean's 2004 presidential campaign.

"I noticed that because of our media diet, we were consuming everything that was great about Howard Dean. Even after that scream incident in Iowa, we still thought we could win and that we would make it, and we went on to New Hampshire and South Carolina thinking that victory was just around the corner. That was when I began to see that we can get a little delusional in the world of politics.”

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Social Networking and Trade Associations

Have social networking sites for professionals such as LinkedIn made trade associations obsolete? Maybe not.

Even though some trade associations, such as the Pay Telephone Manufacturers Association, may have lost their allure, many continue to attract members who are interested in networking, sharing knowledge and acting in concert. And emerging industries and professions are spurring creation of new associations.

There are an estimated 92,000 trade and professional associations in the United States, according to a story broadcast by NPR last week. "But as the American workplace changes, some trade associations are having trouble adjusting," reports NPR's Linton Weeks. "Many associations – including those for plastics engineers, carpet cleaners and commercial printers – have struggled to survive."

Weeks notes the association of association managers, ASAE, has turned to futurists for survival tips.

"An association must be in the business of providing just-in-time knowledge to its members," suggests Jim Carroll, author of Ready, Set, Done: How to Innovate When Faster is the New Fast.

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Pitching Public Broadcasting

With all the tumult in the media business – smaller audiences, shrinking revenue and fewer traditional outlets – one traditional news source remains a sure bet for reaching a key audience. Story pitchers should stay focused on public broadcasting, a relatively stable platform during the past few years.

Business communicators tend to overlook opportunities to place stories on the many great public radio outlets in the region. They shouldn’t. For instance, Oregon Public Broadcasting (OPB) attracts a sizable audience and reaches key population centers in the state. Two years ago, OPB said it reached 350,000 radio listeners in Oregon each week. Its audience is growing.

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