Cobourg News Blog

The decline of printed local newspapers does not mean that there is a decline in the public interest in what Governments are doing.  Recognizing this, in 2023, Northumberland County hired Redbrick Communications to produce a “Communications Master Plan”.  This will be presented to the Corporate Support Standing Committee meeting on July 30 for approval at the August 14, 2024 County Council meeting.  The County already makes a significant effort to communicate with the public with a communications team of five employees: a Director (Communications and IT); Manager, Communications & Creative Services; Communications Officer, Capital Projects; Grant Writer; and Specialist, Digital & Document Accessibility.  Although not strongly spelled out, Redbrick rate the current performance highly although they do list improvements that could be made.

Note that “Communication” is both internal and external but my report focuses on external communication.

Let’s look at some of what the Master Plan says:

Current Situation

Selected items from Master Plan.  For a much bigger list, see the full plan – download from Resources below.

• Trust in government and government leaders continues to be in decline in Canada.
• Along with the decline of traditional media, in Canada, we are seeing some growing distrust of media.
• Communities are experiencing greater polarization, misinformation and information overload. There is also a rise in the spread of disinformation.
• The County’s Communications team is well respected and achieves high-quality work despite limited resources and capacity
• The public expects information how and when they want to receive it, with people appearing less inclined to proactively seek out information about government activity.
• There is a general lack of understanding around which level of government is responsible for which services.
• Public interest in engagement tends to be low.
• Survey respondents feel seniors, the homeless, new residents & youth are the hardest to reach audiences.
• Based on nine municipalities with populations ranging from 82,000 to 150,000, the average number of Communications full-time equivalents is seven.
• The community says that the website is hard to navigate and they want more engaging content on social media.
• They want less reliance on digital communications. The community would prefer hard copy notices and newsletters or emails.
• The public would like comments and questions answered on social media.
• For the past five years, Facebook has consistently been the top source of traffic to the County’s website by far.
• Mis- and disinformation continue to spread, especially on Facebook community channels,
• Under the heading of “Risk”: Complicated stories, such as homelessness, growth, and preparing for change, are challenging to tell. Different audiences want different things. There are pressures from other levels of government.

Recommended changes

Selected items

• Northumberland’s team would benefit from one to two additional full-time positions to ensure a sufficient complement to meet the entire organization’s communications needs. (The County’s current communications department consists of five team members, of which only 2.5 are professional communications resources. The additional roles – Grant Writer and Digital & Document Accessibility Specialist – while they complement efforts, support corporate priorities.)
• Innovate: Establish new ways to communicate, engage and tell stories [but few explicit suggestions].
• Partner: Commit to strengthening collaboration with existing networks of staff and partners while embracing new voices.
• Formalize a competency training program for staff (e.g., outcomes-focused program development, media relations, issues management, content accessibility, social media)
• Formalize process for providing Customer Care Representatives with notices and key messaging to support response to public inquiries, and for Customer Care Representatives to share insights with Communications based on public interactions
• Consider a municipal magazine to fill declining print media gap; a ‘Municipal Minute’ video podcast; and expanded use of roadside signage.
• Oversee a website redesign project to modernize the corporate site, emphasizing community story-telling, ensuring straightforward language and simple navigation, and focusing on mobile-first based on trends in community access.

Research for the plan included interviews with “local media”: Pete Fisher, Sarah Hyatt, Rob Washburn, and Sue Dickens. 

My favourite communication tool – email – was very briefly mentioned but not discussed.

Overall, the plan mentioned some important facts and the existence of the plan showed that the County cares about communicating but there was no magic bullet.

At the same meeting, a report on Communication’s KPIs will be presented – includes some interesting information.

For comparison, the Town of Cobourg has two communications employees and no master plan and few KPIs – the recently introduced operational plan includes some communications KPIs.

Resources

• Memo from Kate Campbell, Director Communications and IT – Communications Master Plan
• Northumberland County Communications Master Plan
• Northumberland County Communications Master Plan Presentation
• Northumberland County Communications Q2 Update (KPIs)
• Cobourg Operational Plan

Print Article: