LET’S HEAR IT

Interview with Rachael Kagan, Director of Communications and Public Affairs at Blue Shield of California Foundation – Transcript

Introduction

Eric: Welcome to Let’s Hear It. Let’s Hear It is a podcast for and about the field of foundation and nonprofit communications produced by its two co-hosts, Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. No relation.

Kirk: Well said Eric. And I’m Kirk.

Eric: And I’m Eric. The podcast is sponsored by the College Futures Foundation, which envisions a California where post-secondary education advances equity and unlocks upward mobility now and for generations to come. To learn more, visit…

Kirk: collegefutures.org. You can find Let’s Hear It on any podcast subscription platform.

Eric: You can find us online at letshear.it.cast.com. You can find us on LinkedIn…

Kirk: And yes, even on Instagram. And if you like the show, please, please, please rate us on Apple Podcasts so that more people can find us. Let’s get onto the show.

It’s nice to see you here today, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Aw. See, I know. If I don’t say it, you’re gonna say it. Aw. It’s been a while. How you been?

Eric: You know, it’s every day is a new, fresh, exciting experience, I have to tell you. Oh goodness. Oh goodness. We’re here. We’ve been out for a while, as you may recall. We’re back folks. Sorry for the brief little interlude, but we hope that you enjoy this one and that you’re welcoming us back into your lives.

Kirk: Welcome us back in and we always welcome you. And yes, it was an intentional departure. It was an intentional delay or whatever absence, but it was still an absence and we felt it. This is another good one and I’m glad we’re back. This is, I think, timely. It’s important. There’s a lot in here to get into, set it up and then let’s go through it because this is a really excellent conversation and very important work that’s happening here.

Eric: Well, I had a really interesting conversation with a colleague Rachael Kagan, who’s the director of Communications and Public Affairs at Blue Shield of California Foundation, and Rachael is a public health expert and she has taken everything she has learned as a journalist and as somebody who has worked in public health communications and turned it into a really, really interesting body of work as running a communications department at Blue Shield of California Foundation. And one of the things that she has been working on that has been really, really interesting is this journalist playbook for journalists who are interested or who may be interested in writing about domestic violence. And I take her through this conversation about how she created this playbook, what’s in it, why it matters. And it’s a really interesting conversation. And as I mentioned in the conversation, it is a playbook on playbooks. So if you are out there interested in finding ways to engage journalists in ethical, useful, helpful, fact-based, good journalism on issues that you care about, you would do well to check out this journalist playbook, which is at letsendDV.org and listening to the conversation.

Kirk: Yeah. This is just so many things wrapped into this, so I’m glad you said it. The playbook is at letsendDV.org. I also wanna mention you do this at the very end of the interview, but you give the domestic violence hotline number at the end of the interview, and that number is 800-799-7233. As I was listening to you guys talk, Eric, I was thinking, and I’m so glad that Rachael had the data point. She’s saying that 58% of California adults have experienced domestic violence, either directly or through a friend or loved one. 58%. There’s part of me that thinks that number is low. Because so much of this goes unreported and people don’t come forward about it. And so while we’re gonna be talking about the communications aspects and the model and the incredible depth and breadth of experience that Rachael brings to this work and the great work of Rachael and the team that put this together, let’s also recognize that this issue of domestic violence, it touches so many people and it’s so sensitive and it’s so troubling and so challenging.

And so if anybody’s listening to this and needs a resource to get support, it’s right at the tip of your fingers. It’s 800-799-7233. This is easily, Eric, one of the most important conversations you’ve ever had, and let’s hear it. I’m so glad to be part of it. So let’s listen to Rachael Kagan and Eric. This is Rachael Kagan on Let’s Hear It.

Main Interview

Eric: Welcome to Let’s Hear It. My guest today is Rachael Kagan, the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Blue Shield of California Foundation.

Rachael: Thank you so much for coming on the show. I’m really happy to be here. Thanks so much for the opportunity, and I’m excited to talk about this great project, the Journalist Playbook when we get to that part of our discussion.

Eric: Yes. So that is the ostensible purpose for this. But first, I just, I know that you are, this is your first job in philanthropy. Is that right?

Rachael: That’s true. Yeah. It’s been almost five years now.

Eric: Oh my God, I can’t believe it. How’d you make the transition? Where’d you come from?

Rachael: I feel like this is a dot that has been connecting my whole career. So I’ll just step back for a moment and say that I come from a family with a history of social justice work. My grandparents worked in the civil rights movement. My parents were involved in the anti-Vietnam War movement and that I became involved in the anti-apartheid movement in college. And so all of those were mission-driven and very of their time movements, and they’re all things you can’t do alone. In fact, shouldn’t do alone.

I’ve also always loved writing, and so after Nelson Mandela was elected president of South Africa, I went into journalism. I went back to school and got my master’s in journalism. I started to cover very meaty topics working in urban daily newspapers, covering education, immigration, and then health. So it was that health beat from which I then moved into health communications, health policy work, and really found a home in public hospitals, in government, public health departments, and I was so proud to represent that work. It was so important and is so important to the community and it’s very high caliber work and mission driven.

So for me, all those dots were connecting, even though those jobs may have been quite varied. And then about five years ago, I thought, “Gee, is this the end for me or shall I try something else in my career?” Of course, for all of us, there’s still things you don’t know and haven’t done, but I was interested in seeing if I could bring that experience into another field that was related, but would provide me with a learning curve and also an opportunity to contribute. That’s how I got my current role in philanthropy at Blue Shield of California Foundation.

Our mission is to achieve health equity and end domestic violence in California. So I came into that with a lot of experience in communications and health equity leading teams working in complex environments. And so I’m really fortunate now that I’m able to lead a communications team and to create strategic campaigns and to make grants. So it’s a lot of dynamism in the work, but in a different point in the continuum. Let’s say philanthropy is not exactly in the trenches, but we support those who are.

Eric: It hovers high above the trenches. We float, we indeed. Sometimes we float on our own hot air, but that’s how it echoes. Indeed, we do it. It must be strange, and I’ve spoken to a lot of folks about this, and when you’re in the trenches and then you go, then you start floating above them. Doing health communications for these health organizations must be a real pressure cooker of a job. And then you go to this other thing which provides funding and you’re trying to shift the narrative from your perspective, but absolutely different, isn’t it? How did you manage that transition?

Rachael: It is entirely different. You are so right, and I made the switch during COVID and that made it even more different, I would say, from being in a very interactive environment out in the community all the time, working in government settings, working in community settings, working with journalists, having events, press conferences, being in hospitals to being in my house. So for the first year and a half, I was like, is this a real job? Is this made up? What’s happening? How can I lead a team? But I’ve never met, how can I join an organization that I’ve never, you know, shaken hands with anyone, someone’s paying me. So it must be a job, right?

Yeah, it is real to that degree. And that would be true for any job you start in COVID times. But for me, I think that one of the advantages certainly is that opportunity to step back and look for what’s working. True, but I think the opportunity is to look for gaps. To look for, well, how can or can we, in philanthropy contribute to something that the people who are on the ground, who are just fighting fires every day, may not even see. Or maybe they do see it, but they don’t have time to do anything about it, or they don’t have the resources to pause and say, if this only fit together better, or this is a gap, or we need this piece of the puzzle.

And so I appreciate that opportunity that philanthropy gives you, not only to observe, but then to do something with your observation. It can be money. Funding that is our main job, right, is to get money out the door. But it’s also to have internal expertise and perspective relationships with grantees and people in the field so that you have some credibility to your observations and you can offer them and take no for an answer or yes for an answer. And so that is a very rarefied position to be in. One that the job of a daily journalist or of a public hospital spokeswoman or of a department of public health, the communications director does not have that luxury. I didn’t know really, that’s what philanthropy could do, that there’s more to it than writing checks. Although writing checks is essential and we should never stop doing that.

Eric: You’ve certainly teed up this next question perfectly because you’ve created this really interesting resource, a journalist playbook for journalists working on who cover domestic violence or who might consider covering domestic violence, and it feels to me like you’ve done the perfect amalgamation of all of these jobs that you’ve had. So can you just talk to me a little bit about why a playbook for journalists felt like it was a gap that needed to be filled?

Rachael: Sure, absolutely. Yeah. The Journalist Playbook is a great product that I’m excited to talk about, but I want to point out there’s a context to it. It really is part of a multi-year strategy, a communication strategy to change the conversation about domestic violence. So at the foundation on our team and across the work of the foundation, we believe that ending domestic violence can be done. And one of the things that requires is changing the conversation about it.

So there are grants that we make to programmatic solutions to supporting community driven solutions, prevention, healing. All of that is so important and is the foundation on which we then build strategic communications. But one thing those programs and those efforts don’t do is work to change the conversation. So that’s a contribution that communications can make. And we really wanna create a world where people treat domestic violence as a health equity issue and a multi-generational cycle that can be prevented. That’s a pretty new way of thinking about it.

So the journalist playbook emerged from a series of studies talking with journalists, talking with people in the domestic violence field, looking for opportunities. Where is the conversation and where can, could we experiment and try to insert ourselves and our partners to change it? So the first thing we did was we created a website with some messaging around domestic violence is everywhere, but it is not inevitable. It is healable and preventable. That website is LetsendDV.org. That was year one.

In year two, we did a limited podcast series about what does healing and prevention actually mean. And so interviewing grantees and partners in the field. But there was still something that we felt, I shouldn’t say, but, ’cause those were great and needed to build towards the playbook. The playbook though, gave us, I think really an opportunity to contribute our unique position and expertise. A lot of the people on my team, including myself, are former journalists. I wanna give a shout out to Jenna Lane, who’s the project Lead on the Playbook, who, without whom it would not be what it is today.

And so the Journalist Playbook really was designed by journalists and domestic violence survivors for journalists to improve their coverage of domestic violence. And we have found there’s a huge appetite for that. So we’re really excited to create a resource to meet that need. As I said, one of the things in philanthropy is we have relationships with the journalists and with grantees and people who are already interested in doing this, who are already improving the coverage of domestic violence. And so that gave us a community and folks to support and provide a resource and work together to create a resource.

We also, we wanna strengthen them. Ultimately, the work has to happen. It doesn’t happen in the foundation, but we’re well positioned, I think. And we always have to ask ourselves, I think in foundations and in communications, should this be coming from us? What role do we play? And so having a process that also included an advisory group of survivors and journalists, and that advisory group was managed by the California Partnership to End Domestic Violence, a very important statewide advocacy organization. And so that was really important for the content, but also for the credibility of the work.

We know that journalists want to hear from other journalists. We did a lot of user testing. We changed the design entirely at one point because the users were like, I can’t find anything. What is this? And that was before we rolled it out and I wouldn’t say that was a setback. I would say that was actually a step forward, but it was a surprise and a good one to learn. Once we identified this gap, I would say, then we set about to fill it with a lot of help and with the perspective of the people for whom the resource was being created and to support journalists within journalism to help change the system of journalism itself.

It’s not usual for journalists to let sources read their quotes or tell them it’s okay if they’ve changed their mind or give them really granular details about what the story is about. That’s a very different method than most of us who’ve been journalists who are journalists today, were trained in. So it is a bit of a, it’s a shift in how, as in addition to what is being produced.

Eric: And some folks may say, oh, you’re telling journalists what to report or you’re leading them in a certain direction. And you might consider, or the devil’s advocate would say that that’s not actually journalism, that what they’re doing. Can you just talk about how, what you were hearing from journalists about what they needed to be able to cover a story. Why this is a good partnership?

Rachael: Yes, something that we talked about a lot. And this is really not a PR project. We don’t do PR in this realm of changing the conversation. And we know that journalists don’t wanna be pitched and told what to write, nor is that appropriate. It’s the fourth estate, they have a job to do. So we didn’t make it super glossy. We don’t do pre-produced packages. It’s not, here’s your story, plug this in. We really came with that ethic, I would say in the first place. But then we got more information from the journalists themselves in terms of what they need.

And so in the playbook you’ll see some of the things that we know that they need the most are sources, right? Journalists are doing, if they’re gonna do a story on domestic violence, they don’t really want a lot of ideological mumbo jumbo on deadline. If you have a lot of time, it might be great, but they want to get in there. Who can I call? What’s their number? What’s their email? Who are they?

So we have a pretty robust source catalog, and it’s something that we always are adding to. That’s the other thing about the playbook is it’s a living document. So we know they wanted that and that’s in there now in a much more, I would say it’s foregrounded. It was in there before, but that was one of the design things that we learned is I wanna see that right away. Our partners at Daylight Design in San Francisco, the human centered design firm that we worked with, were really good at synthesizing the input and then turning those comments into design solutions.

Another thing that journalists wanted was data, right? What are the facts? One thing that we heard from people about why is it difficult to cover domestic violence or what are the limitations in doing so, was that there really isn’t data that classic you go to your editor. This matters because these facts, these numbers, this prevalence, these studies, and so we do have a data and resources section in the playbook that we’ve tried to make very easy to grab a top data point and then a link to the source.

I will say though that that problem of not enough data is a problem in the field, so it’s not something that we can change by creating a playbook. But what we can do as funders is fund more research, and we do that and bring that research into the playbook, and also support advocates for more research. One foundation cannot fund all the research of a major public health problem, but we can elevate the need for it. So that one is, I would love to be able to say, the data section tells you everything you’ll need to know, but everything you need to know isn’t being studied. But we have pulled together and we’ll continue to pull together what is there.

And then the third thing I would say that people wanted are examples. What are good stories? And I see a distinction there that’s not PR, that’s not saying we wrote this or make sure your story has us in it or has this grantee in it or has this point in it, but here’s stories that do a good job and here’s why we think so. And journalists really wanted to know who was this playbook from? Like where did this come from? So we’d have a really clear section about our artists and Daylight Design and California Partnership to End Domestic Violence and the advisors so that it’s all transparent and it’s there and it’s really meant to be helpful for whatever stage of someone’s career they’re at, whatever deadline they may be on, and whichever aspect of domestic violence they might be interested in or to learn about new aspects that they may not have thought about, but this playbook can help them to go in that direction.

Eric: We’re gonna be right back after a very quick break with Rachael Kagan. Talk more about the journalist playbook, which is at letsendDV.org. We’ll be right back after this. You’re listening to Let’s Hear It. A podcast about foundation and nonprofit communications hosted by Eric Brown and Kirk Brown. If you’re enjoying this episode, you may just be a rule breaker. Check out season two of Break Fake Rules with Glen Galli, CEO of the Stussy Foundation as he chats with inspiring leaders in philanthropy, government media, and more about breaking the fake rules that don’t work so that we can build a future that does new episodes of break fake rules drop monthly. Check them out wherever you get your podcasts. And now back to the show.

And we are back with Rachael Kagan, the Director of Communications and Public Affairs at the Blue Shield of California Foundation. And we’re talking about, I have to tell you, I think this is the best kind of journalist resource I’ve ever seen. And you’re right. Daylight did an amazing job. It’s so well designed and good design solves a problem. And the problem is how do I get the information I need so I can get on about my life. And one of the things that for sure, when you work with a journalist, you wanna be able to give them everything they need to be able to quickly do their story. And that’s invariably what they want from anybody. And of course, if you’re presenting it in a way that’s fully transparent and clear and easy to get to, then they’re going to be able to write their stories more easily. And so that leads me to my next question is, how’s it going? How are they using it? What are you learning?

Rachael: It’s so exciting and really invigorating to work directly with journalists on this project. As a funder, we do fund journalism and journalists, so some, we had a good starting point of partners, but we’ve also been able to really expand that circle by generating this resource and by having a really good several rounds of testing, like I said, and focus groups with journalists.

We just did in April, a focus group with partners at the Pivot Fund made up of journalists of color who are publishers, editors, reporters actually from outlets all around the country. And what we heard from them was one thing that is always true whenever you’re in a group talking about domestic violence, which is a lot of people in that group are going to have personal experiences, and that is true whatever walk of life, whatever profession, because it’s such a prevalent issue.

So one of the things that came up in the focus group was people saying they had either themselves or through someone that they knew had an experience with domestic violence. We also knew, heard from them that they are covering a lot of related issues. Things like child welfare, gun violence, police, and the criminal justice system. There was a lot of interest in the nuts and bolts of reporting, which the, in the playbook we try our best to provide support for how to do interviews, how to talk with sources, so those are some of the issues that the playbook sets out to address.

There was also interest in how to interview people who had caused harm, which we don’t take on directly in the playbook, but is a great question and would be an example of the kind of thing we would learn from feedback and think about. Hmm. Who can we talk to in the world of advocacy, of what survivor organizations, what organizations that work on restorative justice and work with people who cause harm? Might we bring them in to contribute something to the playbook or to act as a source? If you wanna learn more about this, you could talk to this person who does that type of work. So that was, I think, a great example.

We’re also launching the playbook at the Association of Healthcare Journalist Conference in LA in May. So we’re gonna have a workshop there and learn a lot more from, in this case, healthcare journalists about how do they see domestic violence as a health issue and what are their questions and what would help them to cover it. So those are a couple of sort of iterative examples.

I would also say I’m just really proud that the playbook is already being used by KQED and by the LA Times, and by American Community Media, which is the new name for ethnic media services. We’ve already been hearing from places like the One Love Foundation and the Aspen Institute that they’re putting it into practice. And we’re going to be doing a session with the Center for Health Journalism at USC in the fall, and with the Annenberg Journalism School at USC, using the playbook as part of a curriculum to help teach domestic violence recording.

That’s some of the sort of impact and ways that we’re seeing when I say there’s a big appetite for this, people want it, are using it, and they’re also telling us what they want more of, or I couldn’t find this, make it more prominent. And so I’m really glad that we’ve set it up in that way, that we’re not just, here’s our bow, we tied it around it. Here’s your product and go do it now. It just doesn’t, that would not be effective and the result would not be as responsive to what journalists need as what we hope we are doing with the playbook now.

Eric: Were there any models you looked at to be able to create this? Are there other playbooks out there that you thought were helpful?

Rachael: So we did look at journalism, nonprofits such as Pointer and Dart and some of the journalism schools that do this work. The Hope and Heal Fund also, we looked at, they have a play, I don’t know if they call it a playbook, but resources for journalists to write about gun control or gun violence. And there’s a variety of resources out there.

I’ll say that one of the inspirations that I personally had came from my experience as a journalist and as someone working in communications in government, which was seeing the way that the coverage of mass casualty incidents has changed over time. I remember when I was in the shoes of someone who would answer the phone when a journalist called getting communications flyers, and I’m so sorry, I don’t remember from whom, but I do remember the content, which was when there is a shooting, don’t have a picture of the shooter on the front page. Don’t lead with that person’s name. Don’t lead with the speculations of that person’s biography. Yes, those are sidebars. Yes, they do. They’re news.

The news and the way to improve our society, which is confronting mass casualty incidents, is to lead with the victims. Whatever you can find on the first day, whatever picture, whatever, a little snippet or tidbit, and then second day, bigger stories, more and more about who was affected, and then include a policy story. What were the laws in the state or city where this happened? What were, what are the, what have been the efforts around gun violence in these settings? Are there associated or connected issues? Sometimes domestic violence is a connected issue, actually, and that was an inspiration for me.

Like we’ve seen that happen and I thought, I think we can see that happen with domestic violence too. That change is possible. You’re not alone if you’re trying to make that change. If you’re a journalist, you can participate. If you’re a funder, you can participate. If you’re a survivor or someone working in the domestic violence field, there’s a role for you in changing this conversation, and we hope that the playbook is one contribution that brings a lot of those groups together.

Eric: Now, it’s early days on the playbook, so they’re obviously journalists, still working on stories, but have there been stories on domestic violence that you felt have shifted? The issue have helped the public better understand what it is and how to address it. Are there, like, why is journalism such a valuable resource in shifting hearts and minds and the narrative on a, on any issue?

Rachael: Journalism is in some ways where the public square still happens, at least to some degree. We know that journalism is an experience people have on the ground, right? Journalists themselves and their sources. Where in the world where people still have beats and cover the communities where they live in, those are relationships, but even in a shorter term, those are exchanges that happen between people and then the result is put out there for all the world to see and lasts forever.

So we see it on a sort of experiential change happening on a sort of one step at a time. We also see the stories are read by decision makers, by policy makers, by advocates. One surprise from the playbook was we are really developing it for journalists, but with survivors. And we have started to hear from organizations that are not journalist organizations that when journalists call, they can now refer them to the playbook. It actually equips the survivor and the advocate. I don’t have to do all this work for you. I may not have time to educate you.

When the organization came up to us and said, if a journalist called us through the playbook, we would talk to that, add us to the source directory. But when journalists called, just from random, and I’m not trying to denigrate any journalists, but just the experience they told us is, it’s too much work for us. The questions, why didn’t she leave? Why are, why isn’t he in jail? And for an inexperienced journalist who, you know, may be on deadline and only has the police to talk to, I understand why they ask those questions. But those questions do not change the conversation, and they do not do anything to promote healing or prevention or to get survivor’s voices into the story.

So we’re seeing it as having a bit more of a porous quality, that it actually helps the sources. To answer your question about example stories, we do have a section in the playbook called Examples. And so I think that the story in there that right now it’s a growing list, so there’s five stories in there now, but we’re adding to it and one of them is from Politico and it’s called A New Approach to Domestic Violence, and it talks about the way the healthcare system can help with prevention and healing.

There’s another one that looks at, that’s called Who Gets to Kill in Self-Defense. It’s looking at a study that this journalist participated in with Stanford Law School of Women imprisoned in California for killing their abuser and what that research can tell us and how different women, depending on their demographics and their other circumstances are treated differently and how a domestic violence crime is treated differently than another.

And so I think those things do change the conversation. They create opportunities for policy and practice change, and they create opportunities to think differently and talk differently about this issue. That even though it is so widespread, is still pretty shrouded and stigma and shame, it’s still considered often very private. Something between two people and something that you either call the police or you don’t. And there’s a lot of reasons people don’t wanna call the police that are valid reasons. So that’s more, again, speaking from my experience at the foundation, right? Work that we’ve done and that we know about and support and bringing that knowledge in to expose journalists to it and then offer them tools who want to, is a way to bring the whole thing full circle.

Eric: You’ve done this great playbook for journalists in domestic violence, but domestic violence isn’t the only issue that you work on. Can you talk a little bit about some of the other things that you’re working on and a little bit about the communications around them?

Rachael: That’s true. We have a whole portfolio around health equity work and around working with public health departments to help them better serve the communities that are in their mission and in their purview. We also work on economic security and mobility, supporting benefits and policy changes that help put more money in the pockets of Californians, and so things like paid leave and earned income tax credit, care work, childcare.

So I think there’s a lot of conversations that probably do need to change. The thing with the domestic violence work is the foundation is really, has established 20 years of leadership in that area. And so again, from whom is this idea coming? Domestic violence idea is very credible coming from us. It doesn’t mean we can rest on our laurels, certainly I don’t have any expectation that all of our ideas are going, but it’s worth testing those out.

And so as we develop further in our other program areas, we continue to seek out ways that communications can support the programming. So this month we actually are doing a health equity campaign on social media for National Minority Health Month, which is a way to get started on a higher visibility for that work. My dream, though, is still to get the playbook in the AP style guide. So I would not say we’re done with the playbook by any means, but we are excited to use some of what we’ve learned to explore other opportunities with other subject areas at the foundation.

Eric: My dream is to get the Oxford comma in the AP style guide, but that’s another thing entirely.

Rachael: That’s a nightmare.

Eric: Just with the couple of seconds that we have left, let’s just remind folks it certainly within the sound of our voices, people are experiencing or know somebody who has experienced domestic violence. And I just thought it might be a good opportunity to let people know about the domestic violence hotline. Can you just remind folks about what it is and how they could use it?

Rachael: Yeah. I think it’s really important whenever this topic is discussed, to know that it is affecting people who are in the discussion in that moment. We have some poll results from a couple years ago that 58% of California adults have experienced domestic violence, either directly or indirectly through a friend or loved one. So that includes any room you are in, any audience live or in person or virtual. And so it’s really important to remember that and to be trauma informed in our work as journalists, as funders, as advocates, as podcast participants.

And so we try always to have a practice of including the National Domestic Violence Hotline information, which I will give right now. It is 1-800-799-7233. It is a service that is available to anyone in the United States, and it’s really valuable and I encourage anyone who is having reactions to this discussion or as they go through their day, and this issue comes up to avail yourself of the resources. Domestic violence is very prevalent, but it is not inevitable. It is healable and preventable, and there are resources to help you, whatever stage that you may be at.

Eric: Your work is a reminder that foundations don’t, like I’ve always said, they’re like the kids on the playground who watch the other children play, but you found you actually can do lots of stuff and this is such a great resource, a great example, and a playbook for playbooks. And so I’d say to other folks out there who are working on a specific issue, use this playbook as your own model to start thinking about how do you work with journalists? What do they need and how do you provide them with the resources they need in order to cover a story well? And so I just really applaud you, Rachael Kagan, Director of Communications, Public Affairs, Blue Shield of California Foundation. Thank you so much for your work, and thank you for coming on the show.

Rachael: Thank you, Eric. It’s been a pleasure.

Post-Interview Discussion

Kirk: And we’re back. So even though the topic is so just sad, right? That so many people experience domestic violence, and it’s so troubling, I have to say that I found this to be a very uplifting conversation. Because, here are my takeaways. Number one, journalism still exists in America.

Eric: Yep.

Kirk: And there are a lot of organizations serving journalism.

Eric: Yep.

Kirk: Two, there are people interested in building compelling stories, rooted in real information that are aimed not just to generate clicks, but to actually create real positive change in progress. And Rachael described some of the ways that she’s seen that work play out in her life, in her professional career. But then finally there’s this great set of organizations that when Rachael was just talking about all the different people that contributed to the playbook, but then also all the different ways this playbook is being rolled out, you get the sense that there’s this enormous network of organizations that are working on what I think is one of the most amazing mission statements that I’ve ever heard, which is not just to reduce domestic violence, but to end it.

These folks are working to end domestic violence. And so I don’t know Eric, at a time when there’s a lot of very bleak news happening and a lot of major upset and concern going on for many, many people at many levels, the fact that there’s work like this happening and rolling out such practical, useful tools, this was a very inspiring conversation. Even though the topic, the subject matter is obviously super troubling.

Eric: Well, I think one of the takeaways from this is journalism matters. At a time right now when it is more important than ever to get the right kind of information to the right audiences. This is a way to help you understand how to do it. And as I said at the top before we went into the conversation, that for folks who are interested in advancing, you know, if you work at a foundation and you’re working on ensuring that the public has access to information about important things, this resource that Rachael has helped to create is a great model for figuring out how to do that, to getting information out there, getting data out there, but also stories and people who can tell those stories, access to folks that journalists can speak with, things like that.

So this is really important stuff. We are at this moment in our democracy or in our life on the planet where we have to use every tool at our disposal to be able to turn these things around. And this is a way to do it. And I just, you know, really, really impressed. Rachael’s one of those people who, when she started at Blue Shield, she started thinking about like, how can we use philanthropy to communicate about public health. What are the tools that we can use? She started funding journalism. She started, now she’s funding these journalism tools. She’s working with lots of activist organizations who are getting the word out about important issues, not just domestic violence, but that is certainly one of the more important ones that she’s working on. So it’s great to see folks out there who are working in philanthropy and making philanthropy work, and I think that that’s totally cool.

Kirk: Well, and Rachael of course does not want to become the story here. The story is, I know, letsendDV.org, but this is a great illustration of somebody drawing on this enormous depth and breadth of experience to actually be situated now inside of a major, really important philanthropy and coming up with these really cool and innovative ways to advance issues. And so, you know, Rachael’s done this at the Zuckerberg San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center. She’s been at the California personal healthcare receivership. I mean, she’s been in so many different locations as a former journalist herself.

And again, we, you know, big shout out to all of our former journalists that come into philanthropy and help guide these efforts, but I certainly hear that in Rachael’s conversation about this, that actually it’s that drawing on Rachael’s lived experience and seeing the challenges and the issues that journalists who are trying to cover these really difficult topics, the issues they confront so much of that’s flowing through in terms of what this work is and how Rachael’s approaching it with her team.

Eric: And, and again, this is a great, a really, really great tool. Wanted to repeat Rachael’s shout out to Jenna Lane on her staff who was at the center of helping to create this thing and to Daylight Design, the team that created the website, it’s really, really, it’s functional, it’s beautiful, it works really great. And I’ve met those folks over there and they’re terrific. So it’s so much fun to see you take a complex, like this is a hard project to do, I really believe that, and to pull it together with such elegance and grace and intelligence is, I’m very, very impressed.

Kirk: Well, domestic violence is such a difficult issue. It’s got so many dimensions. It’s got victims who are in such vulnerable and sensitive situations, and one of the really interesting things in terms of the care that went into the LetsendDV.org design is the first thing that you see when you come to that website. The very first thing that you see is a message for users about digital safety.

Eric: Yeah, that’s right.

Kirk: So you get the impression, right, that people maybe who are coming to this website might have others that are trying to monitor what they’re doing, what they’re seeing. And so, you know, they start off with even before you enter the website, hey, here are steps you can take to protect yourself. But one of the things in terms of then the process of creating this, and I love that you called this a playbook for playbooks, because you know, you just go back to that, what is the list of every communications intervention that people should think about when you’re sitting in philanthropy. You know, playbooks have gotta be of this type, gotta be somewhere on the list.

But one of the issues it seems like that this team is helping address and that we know is a major challenge for journalists, even if there’s such thing as a beat. And let’s pretend that some percentage of the people covering this actually have depth and breadth of experience, but most don’t. But all journalists are operating under such time crunches. They don’t have the time to do this work. And so when you can spend the time to actually pull together the resources, now somebody gets on deadline and deadline used to be 24 hours. Now deadline is what? 30 minutes, right? I mean, from breaking to a publication like you just have a handful of minutes.

And especially issues like this can be so salient and so like, you know, knee jerk clickbait kind of stuff to give people, to give journalists a resource that they can dive into and get what they need, just in that smattering in minutes. Of all the things that are baked into this playbook, it seems like that’s just a crucial piece of it, at least in my estimation.

Eric: Well, not only that, journalists are now all supposed to be bloggers and they’re social media experts and they’re doing audio and they’re doing video and they’re doing 99 other things. You know, time was, I remember the days when the journalist just wrote and now they’re expected to do so very much more. And anything that you can do to make that easier, more possible and better, great and really important.

Kirk: Well, and sometimes they’re actually in the ebb and flow of the conversation on social media, whatever. We’re gonna claim to be social media, right? So sometimes they’re also being asked to defend or speak to their own stories, provide additional support, et cetera. Being accused of having certain motives or biases, even in terms of their own writing. So to have resources like this that they can draw on to say, no, actually, here are the facts, here’s the information, here are the sources that I drew from.

It just seems like it operates at so many levels. I also thought it was interesting, you know, the organization saying, I’ll go on, I’ll go on record for a journalist if they’re coming to me via the playbook, because then I know they’ve done some measure of homework. But if they’re just calling us outta the blue, we’re less likely to talk to ’em because this is such a difficult issue to get right. I thought that was super interesting too.

Eric: Yeah. There’s so many things that even as communications people, we don’t always realize when dealing with a very specific issue. And this is one of those things that has a variety of special areas of concern or care and helping a journalist understand those things, especially if you’re not a, you know, if you’re a general assignment journalist and they assign you to this story and you don’t quite know enough about it to be able to approach it with that level of intelligence that you probably need in order to cover something like this, that’s where resources like this become so very valuable.

Kirk: I have to say that, you know, hearing, and you guys both mentioned it in passing and you just mentioned it in passing again, Eric, hearing the different ways that Rachael’s supporting and Blue Shield of California Foundation is supporting communications work. It’s so interesting. So they’re doing it all right. They’re supporting the advocacy side, they’re supporting journalists themselves. They’re creating a whole bunch of tools and resources. And so I think we should talk about the playbook a little bit more specifically in a moment, but Rachael’s really, and by the way, I love the reflection that Rachael starts the job during COVID, can’t meet anybody.

Kirk (2): Yeah. Can’t meet anybody working for any elegance. I don’t know what you call that.

Kirk: So, you know, Rachael’s wrapping her mind around what is this whole role gonna be and all the things that could be done, but seeing philanthropy is working these issues, but from so many different dimensions. So really understanding the communications aspect, aspect of this in such a complete way. That alone I thought was actually really instructive and really interesting. It’s almost like I want Rachael to come back and just put the whole strategy in front of us and how they’ve gotten there. Because the other piece that Rachael’s talking about is how they’re working with organizations, but also victims, but also journalists.

So they’re really the capacity for the foundation to sit at the center of these big collaborative campaigns, draw on the right expertise and resource, and then deliver that, whatever outputs they need to, but delivered across a whole different swath of interventions that that’s all implicit in this conversation. And it’s, again, it just speaks to Rachael’s depth and breadth of work that she can kind of hold that broader vision.

Eric: Yeah, for sure. I also think that it’s very cool that Blue Shield of California is focusing, is putting so much of a priority on addressing the problem of domestic violence for, you know, these healthcare conversion foundations that were started when non-profit found, when nonprofit medical systems went private. Then they created these nonprofit system, nonprofit organizations that then make grants and do advocacy and do other things. And so Blue Shield, the foundation now has, is kind of tasked with advancing public health in this way is a nonprofit organization that’s working on advancing public health and the fact that they’re choosing this issue, I think is really important. And it’s great to see how intelligently they’re going about it and how they’re using communications to do it, which those things are amazing.

Kirk: So we have to talk about the playbook as a tactic. And I hate to do this because the issue on the topic of domestic violence is so important. And again, go to letsendDV.org and see all that’s been put together there, how it’s being presented, and again, please use the domestic violence hotline if you need it: 800-799-7233.

This notion of playbooks as a tactic, I thought there was so much baked into how to do that right and how Rachael was talking about this. And so, you know, let’s think about the different dimensions of that. So first of all, Rachael had to speak to the her foundation’s capacity to be the right agent of change for this kind of an effort. Right? Do they have enough credibility to do it? If they do, then great, they can move forward. If not, okay, maybe we wanna fund this, but now we’ve gotta find credible partners. Well, guess what? Rachael’s Group has those partners too. So they assembled this advisory group and I thought that notion, the notion that that group contained both journalists as well as victims, was really interesting and that as they moved forward, they were getting different input from the people and the users as they were trying to roll this out. The fact that they had to completely change the design based on user feedback. Yeah. Rachael said that was so much grace, but I could only imagine.

Eric: I’m telling you, if you’re building a website and you do not build in a user testing process and then you’re making a big mistake.

Kirk: Oh man. You know, and then it’s a living document, or it’s a living resource too. And this piece too, I mean, again, in our, it just communications and media environment that changes at the speed of light. Literally, the fact that these resources, the sources, what’s here can be updated and is being updated frequently. So that means what, there’s gotta be a credible host for the project who can bring in the right expert resources and support to actually make something like that happen.

But then lastly, and I’m sure there are other pieces of this that I’m missing, but then the ability for this tool to be used by everybody, you know, so Rachael mentions KQED, the LA Times, like American Community Media, just all these different institutions serving different parts of this whole consideration now have this tool that they can all point to and say, Hey, actually this is a way to extend this conversation.

Those, they’re just, each one of those pieces of how to design this kind of a playbook and do it in a thoughtful and a collaborative way. They almost feel like they each owe, they each get their own chapter in the book for how to do this and do this effectively.

Eric: It’s, no, it’s, it’s really terrific. I strongly urge folks to check out this website. Let’s at letsendDV.org and the journalist playbook is at the top and you can click through to it and you can just, it is a such a good lesson on how to work with journalists to cover stories that matter and give them the tools they need to be effective. To tell the story well, to make sure that all the perspectives are, are understood that, now understand whether there are sensitivities involved, and a lot of folks are funding work that has those types of elements, and I just urge you to consider that and think about finding a way to turn this playbook into your own playbook because the journalists will use it.

And the other thing that I asked her this question about and she answered like, it’s still real journalism. This is not spoon feeding somebody a story or telling them what to write or anything like that. This is enabling journalists who care about an issue to figure out ways to cover it with intelligence and with accuracy and in ways that are sensitive to the people who are involved in the types of stories that they’re writing.

Kirk: Right? Prepping people on how to interview and work with sources. I also thought that conversation about even trying to extend this to thinking about how to interview people who have actually caused harm. Right. You know, and getting every dimension of the story. One of the things I love too, that they’re doing in the playbook is providing examples of really effective journalism. So they’re not saying this is how you should cover it. They’re not telling journalists what to say, but they’re providing models for what impactful journalism can really accomplish.

And I did think that Rachael’s reflection on how mass casualty reporting has changed over time. Yeah, that was a really good example, wasn’t it?

Eric: Oh my god.

Kirk: You know, don’t lead with the shooter’s name. Don’t put the shooter’s, you know, don’t make this about the shooter. Like talk about the victims, pictures of who’s been affected. Include policy connections if possible, other associated issues. This happens. We can actually change the conversation. Yeah. And even in today’s horrific kind of media environment involving so many things that are probably so unpalatable for many of us. This is a reminder, we can actually support interventions that change the conversation in positive ways. And again, that was the very hopeful message that I took from this whole conversation.

Eric: Yeah, I totally agree.

Kirk: Well, I mean, Eric, this was really outstanding and again, Rachael and the entire team that was involved with this, my goodness, what a great resource. And so again, it’s, letsendDV.org is where you can go to get into this, click around. There’s a lot of very great information by the way, that’s also delivered in the right size chunks. Yeah. So you can quickly move through it, right? There’s so many, there’s so many things at the tactical level that you can go through in this and get into.

But then I do want to provide the final shout out again to that 800-799-7233. That’s the domestic violence hotline, and let’s recognize this as such a dear, close, sensitive, difficult topic for so many people, at least 58% of California adults. I think that number’s probably higher, but this is the real work. And Rachael and your team, you’re doing it so well. Eric, this was incredible.

Eric: Well, that was a good one. Thanks. Thanks, Kirk.

Kirk: Happy to give you a shout out. We’re glad to be back. We’ll see you soon and we can’t wait to see you again on Let’s Hear It. Okay everybody, that’s it for this episode. Please let us know if you have any thoughts about what you heard today or people we should have on this show, and that definitely includes yourself and we’d like to thank John Ali, the tuneful and inspiring composer of our theme music.

Eric: Our sponsor…

Kirk: The Lumina Foundation, and please check out Lumina’s terrific podcast, Today’s Students, Tomorrow’s Talent, and you can find that at luminafoundation.org. We…

Eric: Certainly thank today’s guest, and of course, all of you…

Kirk: And most importantly, thank you, Mr. Brown.

Eric: Oh, no, no, no, no. Thank you, Mr. Brown.

Kirk: Okay, everybody, till next time.