Thoughts on Congressional Press Efforts

In the event it may be helpful to those serving as Congressional staff, I wanted to share some thoughts about how to work with your press shop colleagues and maximize opportunities. In my view, many opportunities are lost or missed for a variety of reasons that include failure to plan, fear, and a lack of collaboration.

Ideally, the Member of Congress, Chief of Staff, District Director, and Communications Director will have a clear and agreed upon press strategy. The strategy should articulate known or anticipated opportunities with and challenges from local, state, national and potentially international press corps. It also should encompass the different forms of media outlets and forums. These include traditional newspapers, radio, and television but also social media. In my view, the strategy should include weekly newspapers and stakeholder newsletters as well. It also should articulate the Member’s general themes and priorities.

The press strategy should be offensive and defensive. It should share why the Member decided to serve, what they want to do, and what they are doing or have done. The Member and staff should know what they want to accomplish for the Congressional term, each session, each month, each week, and each day. The Member and staff should also work to anticipate what adversarial or hostile questions they will receive and prepare responses to them.

While Congress appears chaotic, and it often actually can be, it has its general rhythms in terms of event and schedule. For example, the State of the Union is usually in January, the President’s budget is usually released in February and the House and Senate Budget Committees usually have their hearings in February and March, consider their respective budget resolutions in April, and have a budget conference report soon thereafter.

The House and Senate Appropriations Committees conduct their hearings in March and April, begin marking up in April and May, and want to send bills to the floor thereafter and continuing into July and September. When the appropriations process is functioning well, conference reports on individual bills and “minibuses” are done beginning in July.

Concurrent with the appropriations process is development and consideration of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) which at this point has become virtually the only truly must pass bill. Other standing committees generally begin developing different measures in the spring with hearings and markups followed by floor consideration and this continues as long as Congress is in session.

The House of Representatives is a little easier to plan for because measures generally must go to the Rules Committee before going to the floor for full House consideration. The challenge then becomes trying to manage the pace of House activity as several major or important measures can be considered in a week or even a day. In the Senate, on the other hand, it usually takes longer for measures to come to the floor for consideration and those measures are often considered for longer periods of time. The challenge in the Senate can come from amendments during floor consideration as there can literally be hundreds of amendments pending at a time.

To maximize opportunities and to successfully manage challenges, it is important for Congressional offices to be collaborative and to share information. In my view, it is critically important for Members and the press team, if not the District Director and Chief of Staff as well, to build relationships with members of the press. Quite frankly, many opportunities are missed because Members and staff either are afraid of the press or are unable to build these critical relationships. While it is not possible to have great relationships with every member of the press, it is important to engage professionally and to be as transparent and as possible in all interactions with the press. If you do that, you will more often than not have good relationships with most of the press.

In terms of Congressional staff collaboration, it will be greatly facilitated if the legislative team is involved in the development of the press strategy and regularly shares their views on opportunities and challenges presented by the Congressional floor schedule and otherwise. Likewise, the press team should be involved in the development of the legislative strategy. This can be accomplished in part through weekly staff meetings but for the best results, a collaborative office culture that facilitates communication and information sharing is necessary.

The Chief of Staff can create this culture by creating clear expectations and best practices. For example, legislative and meeting memos should be shared with the press team. Before bills are introduced or cosponsored or Congressional Record statements are submitted, feedback should be received from the press team. It is a further best practice to include the District Director in this loop. While nobody wants to create bureaucracy or reduce nimbleness, it is far better and easier to avoid potential pitfalls than it is to manage their aftermath successfully. Additionally, it ensures that the Member can maximize the opportunities that are created when he or she introduces or cosponsors bills, asks questions in hearings, sends or signs letters to Administration officials or Congressional Leadership, and takes votes.