Phil, Send Me An Email

And so it came to pass that without a national federal plan there is near complete frustration, anger and,for some, panic as to if, when, where or how they will get their first Covid-19 vaccinations.

The urgent need for that (again, identified by this Blog 8 months ago and then again last month) comes into sight with the start of the Biden presidency as President-elect Biden has addressed it and put an experienced, competent, capable executive phalanx with great depth of public administative experience in charge.

But, but two things.

First, it is clear the new administration inherits a mess it will need to sort out before they can get on with a rational, fair, nationwide vaccination program. They don’t know exactly what they’ll find because the disastrous out-going administation won’t tell them everything about its hand-it-to-the states vaccination foul-up.

Second, it is clear that if governors like New Jersey’s Phil Murphy cannot be blamed for the failure of the mess handed to them by the Trump administation, they can be blamed for failure to do the one simple, basic task of effective government – communicate.

I look to New Jersey for an example given that it is my state.

New Jersey established a universal official online vaccination registration site. I found it by word of mouth and passed that word on to others I know. Social media however is full of complaints about the registration site working only with difficulty or not at all.

On a personal but important note, in my time as an AP reporter at the New Jersey State House, granted that’s a long while ago, there were by recollection at least 22 daily newspapers in the state of which a third have since folded or combined with others.

Back then of those 22 a full dozen maintained full-time reporters at the State House as did the Associated Press (three of us) and the now defunct United Press International, as well as four major out-of-state papers including the Philadelphia Inqurier and the New York Times. On Press Row at the state capitol 35 reporters went to work every day, numbers that swelled to 50 on legislative days.

With that many reporters covering and looking for news every day, problems like the vaccination registration site’s limitations were exposed quickly. With so large a competitive press corps, the Murphy administation would have been hounded with questions and pressed every day to provide the answers and fix the problems. Then every paper would have a story every day about the registration site with information on how to get to it and use it, doing a major part of the job of informing the public.

But like all recent governors, this governor has no idea, not really, not hardly, what it means to deal with a real press corps, especially in a crisis. And the hard-of-hearing, insular New Jersey Legislature knows even less.

Today the State House press corps is a shadow of that of those bygone years, diminished not by the quality of reporters but by the lack of them as newspapers failed financially and reduced staff. For example, two large newspaper chain, Newhouse and Gannett, between them own a dozen New Jersey newspapers with homogenized capitol coverage from their respective, diminished skeleton State House bureaus.

Yes, state and local news is available on-line but no, it does not have the same impact when it does not arrive on your doorstep every morning or afternoon. A New Jersey governor today does not see 30 reporters or more arrayed before him at a regular news conference. It would take shutting down the George Washington Bridge for days on end to get that big a media turnout anymore and, after all, what governor would ever do such a thing?

Well then, what can Gov. Murphy do now to keep the public informed even if the information is only what I heard him say in an MSNBC interview two days ago. He said the state does not have the vaccine supply it needs. We know that governor but you need to explain that and more every day until you do, until we do.

How? How then for him to communicate with us citizens (us voters)?

The vaccination registration site operated by the State of New Jersey asks every registrant for an email address and phone number.

These are the means to communicate. Send out an email every day governor that reaches every registrant to keep them informed, use the mobile numbers the state collected to text us. Tell the public what you know every day even if it is to say we don’t have the supplies yet, we are working on it, we have a plan to give you a schedule and a site at which to get your shot when the supplies come.

This is not rocket science. It is not preening before the camera as Murphy is want to do – no particular blame there, he is after all a politician and politicians are actors who can’t sing and dance but love the stage (Murphy by the way can – he can sing well). That’s part of the attraction of politics and part of the job. No politician loves another voice nearly so much as he or she loves his or her own. We get that.

The governor doesn’t have to do more than approve a daily message script and have someone hit send.

But neither he or his staff have figured it out nor apparently has staff told him it needs to get done, which suggests his people don’t know it. How do I know? Because they haven’t done it.

I, you, we in New Jersey who have registered have not had one message back from the state. Not a one.

This is a re-elect year for Murphy, a resonably popular man who is an enormous favorite to win a second term, facing as he does a wrecked, diminished Republican Party in a decidedly blue state.

But…But letting this get away from him, letting confusion, panic and despair increase about when how and where there will be vaccinations is just the kind of failure that looks for blame.

You don’t want to be the man or woman in charge when the public looks for someone to pin the blame on for that. You don’t want to be blamed if the public decides the distribution is fixed and unfair, and it will if it doesn’t get information.

Is Murphy the only governor in this box? No, it is clear from reporting around the nation that many other governors are and that they too are failing to communicate well. An occasional 2-minute interview on CNN or MSNBC is in no way an ongoing effective communications/PR effort or, as they call it these days, Comms (sounds so much better than public relations).

The only governor in the country up for reelection this year is Murphy (Virginia also has an election for governor in 2021 but it is a one-term state so it will not have an incumbent governor on the ballot).

Given that fact, Murphy needs to get this right and do it fast or face a lot of trouble in this, his re-elect year and become a caution to other governors.

So, Phil, love to hear from you. Send me an email. Send us all an email.