PIO ToolkitLighthouse for Public Safety
Intro
3 hours

Public Information 101: The Role, the Reality, and the First 90 Days

Public Information 101: The Role, the Reality, and the First 90 Days
$69USD

One-time payment • Lifetime access

One-time purchase · lifetime access · free account created at checkout

or get everything with membership

$259/year · cancel anytime · instant access to this course + everything on PIO Toolkit

About this course

An honest, practical foundation for anyone doing public information work in government, whether you were hired for the role, voluntold into it, or are covering communications on top of an entirely different job.

Nobody tells you what you're actually walking into. The job description lists media releases and social media. The reality is a reporter's call about something you've never heard of, a leader who wants a statement in twenty minutes on facts nobody has checked, a comment thread at 10 p.m., and a quiet question from a colleague about whether Thursday's announcement is a good idea. This course starts from that reality.

Drawing on Christine Townsend's book The Frontline Communicator and on real cases, from Minneapolis and Maui to Flint and Uvalde, it covers what the role really involves, the human skills that matter more than any technical one, and how to use listening and empathy as working tools. It gives solo and part-time communicators the systems that protect them, and shows you how to make the unseen parts of the job visible in a way leadership understands.

It closes with a practical plan for your first 90 days, built to be used alongside the First 90 Days checklist and the Communication Strategy worksheet included with the course. Every lesson has a hands-on exercise, and the exercises build on each other, so by the end you'll have an honest description of your role, a listening routine, a continuity pack, an unseen-work log and a first-draft strategy to take to leadership.

Who This Course Is For:

  • Communicators who are new to government, or new to their organization
  • People covering public information alongside another role, and solo communicators running a one-person shop
  • Experienced communicators who want to reset how they work and how they describe their value to leadership
  • Leaders who supervise a communicator and want to understand what the role really involves

Read a sample from this course

Beyond the job description

Picture the first Monday in a new communications role. Before nine o'clock a reporter has emailed asking about a lawsuit you've never heard of, the parks director wants a flyer by Wednesday, somebody in the mayor's office has forwarded an angry Facebook comment with the single word "thoughts?", and a colleague stops by your desk to ask, quietly, whether you think the announcement planned for Thursday is a good idea. None of this is in the job description you were hired against.

If you ask ten different people what a communicator does, you'll get ten different answers. A writer. A spokesperson. A crisis manager. A social media manager. A brand builder. In truth, you're all of these, and usually several of them at once, often on the same morning.

The official definition says a public information officer is responsible for managing communication between an organization and the public. That's accurate but wildly incomplete. What the job description rarely captures is the reality: you're often the person who gets called when nobody else knows what to do, asked to weigh in on things that are nobody's official responsibility, and expected to produce clear, accurate, compassionate communication under conditions that would make most people freeze.

You are also, whether you signed up for this or not, the conscience of your organization. The communicator is often the first person to notice when something is off, in tone, in timing, in optics, and the one expected to raise it. That takes courage. It also takes a clear understanding of what your role actually is, beyond the day-to-day tasks, because the only way to raise a concern and be listened to is to be very sure of the ground you're standing on.

This lesson starts there, with an honest picture of what you've walked into. It isn't meant to frighten you. It's meant to give you the language to describe your own job accurately, to yourself first and then to the people you work for, because a role that nobody can describe is a role that's very easy to underfund, overload and ignore.

Keep reading — this course continues with 5 more lessons and 47 more sections.

What you'll learn

Describe what the government communicator role really involves, using the gather, verify, coordinate and disseminate functions set out in FEMA's guidance for public information officers.
Recognize the human skills that decide whether a communicator is consulted early, and run a skills audit based on real moments from your own work.
Use active listening and empathy as working tools, and set up a weekly listening routine that brings what residents are saying to leadership.
Build the continuity, coverage and mutual aid arrangements that protect a solo or part-time communicator and their organization.
Make unseen work visible through an unseen-work log and outcome measures, rather than counts of releases and posts.
Earn influence with leadership over time through sound, honest advice instead of arguing for a place in the room.
6 lessons
Self-paced
Certificate of completion
Lifetime access

Course Curriculum

Full access upon enrollment
  1. 1.Beyond the job description
  2. 2.Many hats, one function underneath them
  3. 3.You lead narrative, trust and clarity
  4. 4.The first statement is the one people remember
  5. 5.What this role is, and what it isn't
  6. 6.Try this: write the job description nobody gave you
  7. 7.The public part of the title
  8. 8.Sources & further reading
HomeArticlesCoursesAccount