SportsTurf provides current, practical and technical content on issues relevant to sports turf managers, including facilities managers. Most readers are athletic field managers from the professional level through parks and recreation, universities.
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Facility&Operations | Max Utsler “turf” Defending your N OLD JOKE made its way through e-mail a few years back. It was some- thing like, “You know it’s a bad day when you wake up in the morning, and Mike Wallace and a “60 Minutes” crew are perched on your front porch.” A Well ol’ Mike has retired and, for the most part, you’ll never have to worry about someone else from “60 Minutes” heading to your 3rd base coach’s box and asking what caused that giant mushroom cloud. But the recent explosion of new media out- lets combined with the more traditional media outlets has led to a whole new army of reporters who just might be interested in how you handle (or don’t handle) your business. That growth of media outlets has re-emphasized for every potential news- maker, the importance of knowing how to deal with the media, or as you should think of it, defending your “turf.” Back when you were much younger (probably only five or 10 years ago), you could assess potential media coverage by considering the local newspaper, the local talk radio station and the local TV news outlet. You knew the reporters by name and by sight, and they knew you. You shopped at the same stores, ate at the same restaurants and told similar stories about how high your golf handicap should be. Ahhhh, life was so simple then. Then along came the internet and your world turned upside down. You quickly moved into the age of instant news and the self-appointed, citizen journalist. Thought- ful, edited journalism gave way to “seat-of- the-pants” journalism. Fact-based reporting gave way to opinion and commentary. You have now entered a world of bloggers, twit- terers and whole bunch of ‘ers that haven’t even been invented yet. Better get ready. The first step in dealing with this hyper- speed news media cycle is to do what you should have been doing all along—play of- fense. Most newsmakers love to contact 30 SportsTurf | July 2011 the media when they bring “good news.” Your department received an award from an environmental organization, check. Number of turf-related injuries reduced in the past 12 months, check. You come up with an innovative way of watering the playing fields, check. Those are all valid stories, and you should contact the local media to get the word out. But what happens when the news is not so good or just downright bad? Many or- ganizations follow a, “if we just don’t feed it, maybe it will go away” philosophy. Toy- ota and BP pretty much took that ap- proach in recent months. Now that worked well, didn’t it? Had those organizations taken more early ownership of the story, each would have greatly reduced the self-inflicted pub- lic relations damage. Yes, the news would have been truly negative in the early days, but maybe, just maybe, if they had a chance to advance their version of what happened, perhaps the media might have seen another side and soft-pedaled some of the criticism. You could argue that would be a losing proposition. And the “just ig- nore it” plan was not? In all likelihood you will never face that kind of major crisis. But one way to keep a minor crisis from becoming a major one is to initiate the coverage. Let’s look at some examples that you could encounter: in- juries grow as poor lighting hampers your key fields; staph infections develop in play- ers using the synthetic turf fields; or bleachers fail during kids’ soccer game If the media get a tip on what happened in any of those cases, you will be playing defense, answering the “How could you ever let that happen?” question. You know what it’s like when a parent or coach de- cides to escalate something that you think is rather insignificant. Things can get out of hand in a hurry. Now let’s take a look at how to initiate coverage and frame each of those stories in a more positive way. • The lighting on River Bend Field is more than 30 years old. We haven’t been able to find parts to repair some of the bro- ken units. As a result the illumination is about half of what it should be. That has led to a number of recent injuries. We need new lights, but that is going to cost more than $200,000. This is a bad time to be asking the city for more money. We may have to stop using that field. • A local pediatrician recently contacted us and said he had been treating a number of kids with staph infection. He had dis- covered that all of them were soccer players who play their games on the synthetic sur- face at Partridge Park. Once he called that to our attention we were able to use a non- toxic chemical sweeper to rid those fields of potential problems. The surface is clean and ready for its heavy fall use. • Fortunately no one was hurt seriously, but three parents had to seek medical at- tention when the front row of wooden bleachers snapped during a girls’ softball game. That incident has prompted us to begin inspecting every row of every set of bleachers we have at our 73 facilities. We will have the full inspection completed by the end of the week. The process follows a very simple for- mula. Admit the wrongdoing then explain how you will keep it from happening again. If you admit to the problem, it’s very hard for the reporter to keep beating you up over it. Deny the problem, and the re- porter will go after you like crabgrass on zoysiagrass. This all starts from a premise that if you are a part of a story that has legitimate pub- lic interest, you have a responsibility to be accessible to the media. This is especially true if you work for a taxpayer-supported, government body like many of you do. While the process begins with initiating the coverage, your job is far from finished. Now you must handle the interview. Fol- www.sportsturfonline.com By