Are we making a difference?

We, as in "I", and the rest of the public affairs staff...

Tough question and one I hear bandied about a bit every now and again. For better or worse we're not being judged on metrics per se as any old idiot could blast out press releases and be down with it...nor do we particularly care what the big-time media have to say about Iraq (crickets...).

Right now we're focused primarily on hometown outreach. A lot of the bubbas and bubbettes in the Army come from the smallest places imaginable (trust me). Whatever their individual reasons were for joining the Army (escape, travel, warfighting etc) in many cases some of these folks are among the first to ever really break away from their local communities. In many respects I suppose it is tough on them and it is probably somewhat tough on the small towns as well...particularly as many of them are on their second, third, or fourth trip to either Iraq or Afghanistan.

It is somewhat interesting, however, pitching stories to hometown news outlets particularly when the press release is just the hook to get the local media to do an interview with Private Tommy who is out in the field. Be it small town papers, local radio programs etc it is often funny to listen to assignment editors, anchors, broadcasters etc say "I've never had anyone call me from halfway across the world." Many of the folks are more than happy to do an interview with a local soldier that is deployed over in this broken country. No public affairs talking points, no story to push, no redlines...it is an interesting approach to the issue, I think. The soldiers seem to like it and the local media and townies seem to be pretty thrilled about it as well.

Oddly, getting local network (ABC, CBS, NBC, FOX) affiliates to agree to do an interview. Bizarre...I figured that they'd be the difficult ones to snag.