Today, I sit down with communications pro Matt Friedman to talk about what happens when the basic stuff in media breaks — from lettuce recalls and weather alerts to non-partisan, important voting information.
We get into algorithms, broken trust, and why it’s harder than ever to get simple, accurate information. And that information is crucial for a stronger local Detroit community.
If you care about how you actually find out what matters, this one’s worth a listen. There’s a full transcript below.
Matt Friedman’s latest post: https://tannerfriedman.com/blog/ive-done-food-recall-crisis-communications-the-parasite-situation-is-a-mess/
Follow the show on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever you get shows.
Podcast Transcript
This was lightly edited for posting. Please refer to the original audio before quoting.
Jer: Today’s episode is going to be pretty interesting. Recently, on a lot of levels, it feels like we’ve lost a lot of cabin pressure when it comes to our discourse. Things have gotten wild, people are missing really important information, and discussions are going off the rails.
When I don’t understand what’s happening with media and communications, there’s one person I talk to, and that’s Matt Friedman. He is the co‑founder of Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications.
Matt, am I crazy?
Matt: Not at all, Jer. Not at all.
From mass media to personal media
Jer: Welcome back.
Matt: Thank you. It’s great to be back. I always enjoy coming in here. There’s something about being in this studio and having these conversations.
I think we’re in a situation now that a lot of us saw coming, and now it’s happening in real life. We’re surrounded by opinions, but we’re lacking in our day‑to‑day lives all of this basic, fundamental information we used to need in order to form opinions. Now the opinions come first, depending on who we align with and how we get information, and it affects us in so many ways.
Unless you’re somebody who’s just in love with your own opinions, if you actually like to be informed and try to know what’s going on and make up your mind, it’s really hard right now. You have to sift through a lot.
Jer: With this media mix, it does make it very difficult because algorithms show you what they think you might be interested in to keep you on the platform. It’s not about what you need to know.
That works fine for dog or pheasant videos, but when you’re talking about important information — food recalls, weather alerts, voting — there’s so much fundamental stuff that even five or ten years ago was easy to follow.
Now I’m answering so many simple questions compared to when I started this project. It feels like the greater audience — not directly Daily Detroit people, because if you’re choosing to be here, I appreciate you — is missing the core information that used to be so fundamental.
Matt: When I first started in the PR business after I left broadcast news, what we were doing fundamentally was connecting audiences with information. Of course, that included messaging and perspective, but at the core it was about information.
We had news outlets in this community, mirrored all over the country, that commanded such a large audience that fundamental information could get communicated and get through. Between TV news, radio news, newspapers, and the early internet news sites, it was very much information‑oriented and they reached mass audiences.
What’s happened in the last 25 or so years is that we’ve been transformed as a society. We really don’t have mass media anymore; it’s all personal media. We watch what we want, when we want, how we want, for as long as we want. The customer generally likes that, but at the same time, you get a news story like the recent parasite situation where we literally don’t know what’s safe to eat.
That shows a deficiency in society. I don’t know what to do about it other than wanting to know if I can have a salad today. As a practical matter, it’s frustrating, and we all have examples like that.
Food recalls and broken systems
Jer: So what’s gone sideways, do you think? I’ll link to your blog post about this, but what do you think has gone sideways with this specific food communication issue?
Matt: I think there are a few things happening. Number one: we had a system in this country for how food recalls and food issues were supposed to be communicated to the public, with the public interest front and center. I’ve experienced this firsthand working with clients, and that system appears to have fallen apart — most likely at the federal government level.
Let’s say even if the federal government was compliant and actually interested in tracing this outbreak and preventing it from happening, which doesn’t seem like the case so far, how could that information be disseminated? There’s no easy way to do it anymore.
Putting a press release on PR Newswire and letting everybody pick it up — language we used to use — isn’t going to work anymore. We’re so splintered and scattered as a society that even something simple like “Is the lettuce safe to eat?” is a tough question to answer now.
Jer: And it keeps going through everybody’s partisan lens because trust has broken down.
Matt: Yes, and on top of that, the first thing on Google that comes up now is an AI interpretation of what’s out there. We have to contend with that as consumers too.
Weather, notifications, and real‑time breakdowns
Jer: This ties into something I saw online from a number of really good meteorologists around Michigan. There was a pop‑up storm in Macomb County — I want to say by Blake Farms — and a lot of people felt like they got caught off guard with damage to their stuff.
I’ve seen it over and over this summer: “How did this storm appear out of nowhere?” But the meteorologists are saying, “We gave you hours of notice. We see these things happening. You’re just not getting the message.”
That worries me because we’re in a deluge of notifications. We probably all get a ton of notifications on our phones constantly — some we want, some we don’t. Knowing what the weather is seems pretty important, and we have professionals doing the job and sharing the information, but it’s still not getting out there.
Matt: Part of that is that the way we consume information is so different from person to person and generation to generation. So many of us rely on apps for weather. Those apps are powered by AI; weather apps were really pioneers of AI. They didn’t have forecasters in your zip code — they relied on technology to deliver that to you.
At the same time, people in TV stations are physically there, looking at weather in our market, trying to forecast and communicate it. We have an entire generation of consumers, probably under 35, who don’t watch those TV stations and don’t really know how to watch them.
In my own family, during a tornado situation a few months ago, I had to stay up in the middle of the night to watch TV and text a family member what I was seeing because she doesn’t have access to it.
That’s part of the splintering of media I’m talking about. If you have to get a message out, how do you get it out to the masses? You can’t anymore.
Jer: And real time is very broken.
You go on social media — and I know from the data on our own posts — it takes two or three days for something to disseminate through feeds. At the very least, half a day for it to reach its maximum audience. That changes what you write and produce, but it also means if you have an update that’s really important in the next two hours, you’re likely sunk.
That’s not the consumer’s fault. Some of it is the algorithm. On social media, what comes up first can be something from six days ago because the algorithm thinks you’d be interested in it. That’s fine for art or cute videos, but when it comes to important information, it breaks down.
Elections, media theory, and what actually reaches voters
Jer: So what do we do about this? How much do we care? What catastrophe is it going to take to come up with some sort of notification system that doesn’t cost any money, like what we used to have when everybody watched TV and listened to the radio?
I don’t know what that is. I don’t want to pretend to be a futurist other than to say that on a day‑to‑day basis, as somebody whose job is to connect audiences with information and messages, it’s really hard now because it’s so different, even within a household.
Off air, we were talking about how this election might be a bellwether for what’s effective and what’s not in getting a message out there. This isn’t about an individual campaign or tactic, but about strategy.
Matt: I think what we’re seeing in this election, and in others, is a giant question mark as to how you reach voters with either a message, information, or name awareness.
You see a lot of money spent on traditional media, particularly TV, because the core TV news audience tends to vote — generally people over 65. A lot of money gets raised and spent there. How much does that affect the actual election?
In 2024, there’s an argument that commercials during the NFL — the closest thing we have to mass media — maybe did move votes in swing states.
Then there’s social media. If certain platforms and algorithms were your only source of information for a day, you’d get a very skewed perspective about politics, this election, and certain campaigns.
How much does social media really matter? X, or Twitter as I still call it, at its peak was only used by about 10% of the population. Ninety percent aren’t on there.
Jer: It has an oversized impact on news coverage. I can tell you that.
Matt: You look at cable news, never mind local news where so much advertising money is spent, and cable news is a niche product — a small percentage of the country. But it has an outsized influence on politics, who’s famous, who gets quoted, and who’s well‑known.
Everything seems out of whack now. For every response as to what’s really important, there’s a valid response that it’s not really that important. In some ways, it’s a microcosm of what we’re dealing with in communications overall.
Algorithms, validation, and media literacy
Jer: I hope more people who are consumers of media sometimes take a step back and question their assumptions. I see a lot of things get shared immediately that don’t have sources, or if you’ve been following for a while you know they’re wildly out of whack.
I see polls that are 10 or 12 points off, but they feel good. The thing to realize about algorithms is that what gets shared is what feels good or gets people emotional, not necessarily what matters.
You need a certain amount of volume to do that. Circling back to weather, there are only so many people in Macomb County with a storm brewing. You get shouted out by the rest of the state and country — everyone competing for very limited slots in your algorithm.
Matt: One of the questions I have to discuss with clients when we’re trying to get information out to the public is: how do we make people care about this when people seem to care most about validation above everything else?
What they like and share on social media is what makes them feel validated. What they engage with — that amorphous term “engagement” — is often what validates their point of view. What might challenge their point of view, they feel like they need to argue with on social media.
If we’re just trying to get people to understand something basic and fundamental to their lives, it’s harder than ever before.
Voting in Detroit: fundamentals and options
Jer: One of those basic, fundamental things I want to talk to you about is voting. Let’s talk about the situation this year. I know you work with a non‑partisan nonprofit around that information.
Matt: Yes, I work with Detroit Votes. We’ve been at this since 2020 to make sure that Detroiters understand their options in particular, but also understand the process and trust this professionally run, very important process of voting in the city.
A lot of the fundamentals apply elsewhere, but Detroit is by far the biggest city in the region. It has many more places and precincts for Election Day voting, many more early vote centers for early voting, and many more dropboxes around the city to put your absentee ballots in so they don’t have to go in the mail.
Getting Detroiters to understand the enormity of the footprint and all the options is really important. I’ve had people ask me — including some other clients — why you need a campaign to do this, why the campaign needs a spokesperson, and why you partner with the clerk’s office.
It’s really about providing information in an environment where information can be hard to come by.
Jer: What are a few of the key things people should know, especially city residents?
Matt: Number one: an absentee vote counts the same as an in‑person vote. There have been myths that there’s something wrong with absentee voting, and there have been question marks around it since 2020.
It’s in the state constitution. We all have the right to vote absentee with no excuses that we have to share with anybody.
The other really important thing is understanding early voting, which was enshrined in the state constitution after the 2022 election, when voters in the state passed it by a two‑thirds majority. It’s very popular in theory.
In practice, it allows you to go into an early vote center — whether you live in the city or the suburbs — before Election Day. This year, it starts on Saturday, the 25th, from 9:00 to 5:00. You can go in and cast an in‑person ballot and vote.
Of course, if you want to wait until Election Day, and a lot of people enjoy voting then, all of those options are available to you. Not everybody understands that, partly because it’s new and partly because there’s been misinformation around this since 2020.
Various groups, for their reasons, play the game of not just convincing you to vote for someone, but sometimes muddying the waters so that you stay home or don’t vote at all.
Jer: There is an active effort to make sure some people don’t trust the process, and they should.
Matt: I can tell you as somebody who’s worked closely with deeply committed professionals in this city and elsewhere, they make sure the election happens the way citizens expect and deserve, with accuracy and professionalism every step of the way.
I’m looking forward to voting early on Saturday.
Jer: I think there’s actually going to be a vote‑early party.
Matt: There is, for voters in the city. Everybody, no matter what neighborhood you live in, can come down to West Grand Boulevard between 2nd and 3rd on Saturday. That’s just steps from the studio.
You can have some fun, enjoy live music and other entertainment, and vote at the same time.
Closing thoughts
Jer: That sounds like a good time. You know what else is a good time? Matt Friedman. I know you always keep it honest, and I also feel a little bit better about the world when you come through.
Matt: Thank you. I wish I could say the same, but I think what we’re trying to do — what good communicators should try to do — is cut through with fundamentals.
The world communicates differently than it used to, and differently now than it will in 10, 20, or 30 years, but the fundamentals won’t change. We have to be clear, we have to be honest, and we have to try to get to audiences in ways they want us to.
Let’s hope this audience — your audience, Jer — and others still want facts and information above all. If that’s the case, we’ll be okay.
Jer: I believe in Daily Detroit listeners.
Matt: I do too. That’s why I’m here.
Jer: Matt Friedman, co‑founder of Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications, thanks for stopping by the studio at Tech Town.
Matt: Anytime.
Jer Staes
Source link