Thursday, March 05, 2015

City of New Albany's social media feeds AWOL as winter storm hits.

The tone deafness never ceases. Wednesday afternoon, amid the third (or 50th) day of dire and continual news warnings as to the approaching snowstorm, the City of New Albany Government's social media effort clanked into gear -- and produced this:


The stats don't lie. The posting was a hit on Facebook (it appeared simultaneously at Twitter).

However, this is government's social media site, not an entertainment channel, and not the Re-Elect Mayor Gahan site (which is located elsewhere), and about the time this view of a future aquatics panacea was posted, the bad weather started.

Subsequently there was a major winter storm, travel advisories, hundreds of closings, and even a boil water alert later in the evening -- and through it all, the city of New Albany's social media remained completely silent. Postings belatedly resumed at around 7:50 a.m.

It's worth noting that Jeffersonville and Clarksville seemed to be getting it right.

There'll be fingers pointed at Promedia, but make no mistake: The buck in this instance stops with Jeff Gahan, because when propaganda is substituted for information, and the effort is outsourced to a contractor, the result is likely to be failure.

Will Gahan finally accept responsibility for a "fail"?

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