For the last several years, most EA organizations did little or no pursuit of media coverage. CEA’s advice on talking to journalists was (and is) mostly cautionary. I think there have been good reasons for that — engaging with media is only worth doing if you’re going to do it well, and a lot of EA projects don’t have this as their top priority.
I think this policy has been noticeably harmful, tbh. If the supporters of something won’t talk to the media, the net result seems to be that the media talk to that thing’s detractors instead, and so you trade low-fidelity positive reporting for lower-fidelity condemnation.
Two real-life anecdotes to support this:
At the EA hotel, we turned away a journalist at the door, who’d initially contacting me sounding very positive about the idea. He wrote a piece about it anyway, and instead of interviews with the guests, concluded with a perfunctory summary of the neighbours’ very lukewarm views.
At a public board games event we were introducing ourselves while setting up for a 2-hour game, and described my interest in EA as a way of making conversation. The only person at the table who recognised the name turned to me and said ‘oh… that’s the child molestation thing, right?’ It turns out everything he knew about the movement was from a note published by Kathy Forth making various unsubstantiated accusations about the EA and rationalist movements without distinguishing between them. I felt morally committed to the game at that point, so… that was an uncomfortable couple of hours.
I think this policy has been noticeably harmful, tbh. If the supporters of something won’t talk to the media, the net result seems to be that the media talk to that thing’s detractors instead, and so you trade low-fidelity positive reporting for lower-fidelity condemnation.
Two real-life anecdotes to support this:
At the EA hotel, we turned away a journalist at the door, who’d initially contacting me sounding very positive about the idea. He wrote a piece about it anyway, and instead of interviews with the guests, concluded with a perfunctory summary of the neighbours’ very lukewarm views.
At a public board games event we were introducing ourselves while setting up for a 2-hour game, and described my interest in EA as a way of making conversation. The only person at the table who recognised the name turned to me and said ‘oh… that’s the child molestation thing, right?’ It turns out everything he knew about the movement was from a note published by Kathy Forth making various unsubstantiated accusations about the EA and rationalist movements without distinguishing between them. I felt morally committed to the game at that point, so… that was an uncomfortable couple of hours.