PR firm fumbled media event

She dropped the news at a rather nice and friendly press conference at Westmount city hall on Monday morning. The media event itself was hastily arranged, with some city councillors only finding out about it on Sunday. And everything seemed to go off smoothly once it began.

But Jonathan Goldbloom & Associates, the public relations firm hired to handle the press conference, dropped the ball big time when it came to announcing it to the local papers. My first and only official notification of the event was a "reminder" e-mail I received at 9:20 a.m., just over an hour before Mayor Marks was due at the microphone. Luckily, I was already on my way to city hall by then, having caught wind of the impending announcement on the 7 a.m. radio news and confirming the starting time with a city councillor.

Yes, the Westmount Examiner had to find out about such an important event at Westmount city hall over the radio! How stupid is that?

Once I arrived at city hall and voiced my complaint over this absurd situation, I was told that the Examiner was not the only paper involved in this oversight, which means the situation was even worse than I expected.

It's all very nice to have TV and radio coverage of municipal affairs, but the local press is by far the most important media in situations like these, for they reach the highest concentration of those most interested — and most likely to be directly affected — by the news being reported.

Hopefully those responsible will get their act together and, if they are to continue working on behalf of the City of Westmount, see to it that from now on all relevant media outlets are informed of important events in a reasonable and timely manner — not just the mainstream broadcasters who might offer a few flashy, fleeting seconds of air time that just touch the surface of a story. Westmount's community papers take a thorough, in-depth approach to these local stories, and to leave them out of the loop is a disservice to all interested residents.