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Nemerson, Worcester: 2 views on journalists’ IQs.
Boosters charged with promoting New Haven found themselves at odds over how to convince the national media not to call the city a dump.
A single word sparked the debate: “struggling.”
The New York Times used that adjective to describe New Haven in this otherwise upbeat May 11 story about a one-percenter Yale alum Stephen A. Schwarzman’s $150 million gift to create a Kennedy Center-style cultural center on campus.
“With the transformation, Yale would be among the best equipped universities in the Northeast for arts programming while the expansion would help New Haven, a struggling city where the university is a major employer as well as tourist draw, with its two art galleries and the Beinecke Rare Book & Manuscript Library,” read the story’s sixth paragraph (emphasis added).
The adjective sent city government’s economic development administrator, Matthew Nemerson, into emergency damage-control mode. He fired off an email with a scan of the article to Anne Worcester, head of Market New Haven (MNH), the civic-booster agency funded by Yale, Yale-New Haven Hospital, city government and local businesses; city arts czar Andrew Wolf; mayoral spokesman Laurence Grotheer; Economic Development Corporation Virginia Kozlowski; Yale Vice-President Bruce Alexander; Mayor Toni Harp; and Nemerson’s deputy, Mike Piscitelli. (Click here to read a previous story about their efforts to spin positive New Haven stories in the media as part of a “Perception Task Force.”)
“Folks,” began the email message, which the Independent obtained under a Freedom of Information Act request. “Note the NYT called us a ‘struggling’ city — this sort of ruins all the positive messaging herein.
“(I’ve had two snarky calls for NY about this already)
“How can we have a better angle on these feel good stories so New Haven comes out as well as Yale?
“First, I suggest Lou [Halloran, an MNH public-relations contractor) set up a meeting with NYT and WSJ [Wall Street Journal] editors and we go in and tell New Havens story … second I think we hit key locations with a 1/4ly fact sheet…
“Thoughts?”
No “Blind Acceptance”
The resulting debate revealed two schools of thought on marketing a city to the media. One school, reflected in Nemerson’s approach: The “It’s Not Raining” school, in which an official will insist that the sun is shining to a reporter who is standing in a thunderstorm, in hopes of convincing her to report that all is sunny. The other school: Acknowledge it’s raining, note that other days have been sunny, and point out that flowers blossom after the rain.
Worcester drew from the latter approach in a lengthy response to Nemerson. It read as follows:
“Dear Matthew and all, I am adding Elizabeth Stauderman of the Yale OPAC [Office of Public Affairs & Communications] to this as she let us know that Robin Pogrebin, the author of the Schwarzian gift story, is a Yale graduate of the class of 1987, and a respected and highly influential culture reporter for the Times. Elizabeth did write to her regarding the use of the word ‘struggling’ — noting the Apple Store, Tarry Lodge and the Downtown Crossing development. Her response was to quote from the current state/city unemployment statistics and to say that her editors had suggested ‘beleaguered’ but had settle for ‘struggling.’
“I discussed your idea to go in and pitch the New Haven story with Terry Gallagher at Lou Hammond (LHA). His main point is that we need to provide data to back up our assertion that we are not struggling and we are a City on the Move. The NYT used hard data on unemployment to justify using ‘struggling’ which illustrate’s the media’s need to report the facts and balance a story. The psyche of the media is such as well that it makes a better story when someone can say that a huge donation is going to help a struggling city than it does to say it is going to help a city where everything is already perfect.
“For this particular writer, with the Yale connection, LHA suggests having a New Haven rep come to NYC to try to meet her first at her office or for coffee, drinks. That may help spur her to want to come back. The policy of the NYT is such that they won’t overtly accept an invitation to visit or be hosted, but that doesn’t mean they won’t come on their own.
“LHA would be happy to reach out to editors of NYT and Wall St. Journal to seek to tell a positive story on New Haven. In order to do this, LHA needs information and hard data from City Hall that will illustrate a positive story on the city, including, but not limited to:
“• Real estate/business development
“• Job growth/unemployment reductions
“• Population influx
“• New businesses opening up in the city
“• Statistics on investment in/economic impact of the arts
“• Statistics on crime reduction
“This is data that will be sought by editors. Unfortunately the format of outlets like the Times and WSJ is such that they rarely, if ever, do puff pieces on a destination without some inclusion of both sides of the story. We have to be aware that if there are perceived negatives about a destination, the media will be inclined to include them, even if it is in the context about telling a positive story about the direction the city is going — as was the case with the article on Mr. Schwarzman. Us just saying we are on the move or doing great will not be blindly accepted by the media (wish that was the case though!) — they will want data to show it is so. [Original emphasis Worcester’s]
“Again, the media usually don’t do business stories about how wonderful a destination is, without examining where it has been, as well as where it is going. And there is nothing wrong with that as long as we are telling the story of a city on the move in the right direction. That is how momentum builds and has been the case in other destinations with whom Lou Hammond works, such as Charleston and Providence.
“Matthew, I trust this is information you and your ED [Economic Development] team can provide? And if so, can you please get this over to us at your earliest convenience? From there LHA can craft a pitch and then Terry suggests meeting with you and your team to talk about their pitch points and the types of questions that could be asked should they be able to secure a meeting.
“Thanks, Anne”
In a response email to Worcester and Bruce Alexander, Nemerson suggested raising the issue at a subsequent market New Haven board meeting, with ‘dissidents” allowed to “attend and talk.”
“Finally we are getting somewhere!” Nemerson wrote. “Every issue here touches on the core issues behind the creation of MNH based on the surveys and opportunities of the late 1990s. What an excellent conversion and useful use of all of our time.”
“Let’s keep this to the 3 of us for the time,” Nemerson concluded.
“Striving,” Anyone?
NYT
As of this week, New Haven’s boosters hadn’t yet made that data-driven pitch to the Times or Journal. “The fact-finding is still in play and as soon as we have the data collected, Market New Haven can follow up with the New York Times,” Worcester reported.
Pogrebin (pictured), who has not yet received an invitation to coffee, said she wasn’t trying to malign the city.
“I have a great affection for New Haven, having attended Yale myself. I certainly know the merits of the city and appreciate its strengths. But we were trying to give a sense of how this cultural center might be an attraction of sorts. The editor felt it was important to put the city in context. If anything I feel as if I pulled him back by catching the word ‘beleaguered’ and softening it,” she said.
Asked about the impact of that infamous adjective, Pogrebin said, “You could argue that they might be succeeding in that struggle. The point is it isn’t easy. It has hurdles, as many cities have.”
Nemerson, meanwhile, said he realizes it can be “a fool’s mission” to complain to the New York Times about an unflattering adjective, but a worthwhile mission, too.
He complained that people fail to take into account that high poverty or unemployment rankings for New Haven can make for apples-and-oranges comparisons with those of other cities, especially those in parts of the country where cities incorporate more outlying areas that are separate suburbs in Connecticut.
Plus, he argues, New Haven deserves a break: “New Haven has been playing a role for 100 years as the gateway city, the gateway for immigrants, the gateway for industrial workers. When the country pulls capital out of cities as it’s done for the last 50 years, the city plays a different role. We’re a proud city that’s doing a great job. I don’t think we should be called ‘struggling.’”
Don’t we still have a lot of poverty?
Yes, Nemerson said — but people wrestling with poverty, and their city, deserve to be called “striving,” not “struggling.”
“There’s a difference between a striving and a struggling city,” he argued. “Of course people are striving. Of course people who have been denied access to jobs — yes, we are playing a role. Society has a mix of different people in it. Every region of 1 million people in the country has the same mix.”
He was asked if “striving” is a phony euphemism for “struggling.”
“‘Struggling’ to me is a negative. Sorry. It sounds like we’re not doing something right. Like we are not becoming successful. When you become a sanctuary city, you try to be hospitable to immigrants from Central and South America, when you say to people, ‘Your grandparents moved here for great jobs at Winchester [arms factory, which has since closed]; we want you to stay here and be part of education reform and the rebuilding of your neighborhoods’ — to me that’s a ‘striving’ city.”
Pastels
In the emails obtained by the Independent, Nemerson also differed with Market New Haven about a billboard (pictured) the group erected on I‑95 north in West Haven to promote March Restaurant Week.
After Worcester distributed a copy of the design prior to the billboard’s launch, Nemerson emailed her on Feb. 26 to suggest that it drop the tag line and web site address (“just not important for a billboard when people are driving by at 65 mph”) and change the colors.
“[A]re these really Spring colors?” he wrote. “I would think a bit more pastel … just saying …”
Worcester “thanked” Nemerson for his feedback in an email the next day, and offered her “rationale” for the design.
She wrote that “static billboard impressions and slow traffic flow allow for lots of views and time to read” text including URLs.
“The colors chosen are part of Pantone’s 2015 color forecast,” Worcester wrote. “They are punched up a bit to make sure they reproduce well on a billboard. After 10 years of learning, softer pastels have tended to ‘wash out’ on some past billboards so we don’t want to repeat that mistake.”