Category: 2020

Media Diet 2020

A strategy for choosing what to read, watch and listen to

Last year, in AF Media Diet 2019, I compared media to food, and argued that:

Therefore, it’s crucial for our health to strategize and develop healthy media consumption habits as we would design a nutritious diet.

Now, in the face of a catastrophic pandemic, as we struggle to filter vital signals from harmful noise, it’s more important than ever to spend time and energy thinking about the content we consume.

As such, I’m going to revisit the media diet principles I sketched out last year to see how they hold up in the COVID-19 media landscape — where the stakes are higher, the noise is louder, and the right signal can save lives — and where we’re even more dependent on (and flooded by) digital social networks and distributed publishers.

Despite the fire hose of clamoring content, it’s times like these I value and appreciate free speech — despite the mess — more than ever. There’s more crap to swat away, but we know the truth is out there too. And it’s up to us — each one of us — to find the truth, follow it, question it, amplify it, and live it.

Continue reading Media Diet 2020

A day without an advertisement

How to kick our ad habit

Think of your day as a big party, and you’re the host.

All the food, drinks, music, people and conversations at the party represent your daily life — they’re essentially the various elements of your daily consumption.

Everyone is laughing, dancing, and generally having a nice time catching up, getting to know each other and chatting about sports, books, TV, movies, work, politics and gossip.

That is, almost everyone.

Continue reading A day without an advertisement

The elephant in the egg carton

I had been ordering my groceries online and having them dropped off on my front porch well before the virus hit.

The delivery service made grocery shopping safer and more convenient than the traditional method of driving out and back to the store every week.

What used to take me over an hour now only cost about five minutes and a $10 tip.

Aside from the occasional cracked egg or overripe avocado, they usually fulfilled my order accurately and met my expectations.

Back then food delivery was a valuable service offering I was happy to pay for. But after the virus erupted into a pandemic the authorities took over.

Continue reading The elephant in the egg carton

Colorado COVID-19 communications

A case study in crisis communications and effective leadership from Governor Jared Polis

At a press conference earlier this week, on March 30, 2020, Governor Jared Polis gave a great presentation and update on the COVID-19 situation in Colorado.

I was impressed by the honesty, empathy and strategic messaging. It was a breath of fresh air compared to what I typically hear from politicians.

Gov. Polis’s presentation serves as an example of authentic leadership and effective crisis communications. It also shows how you can — and should — speak conversationally, with a personality, and at the same time maintain appropriate tone and professionalism.

In this post I’m going to break the presentation down into its broad components, comment on strategic communications tactics, and highlight the key messages that jumped out at me. I include excerpts below that I edited lightly for clarity, and I added emphasis to sections that particularly relate to my points.

Continue reading Colorado COVID-19 communications