When a foundation funds bail reform in seven states, the temptation is to launch a campaign. Press releases, op-eds, talking points, a logo. I argued for something else first: understand the room you are walking into. Reform efforts fail when communicators assume the public conversation looks the same everywhere. It doesn't. So before we said anything, we listened.
The workCommunications strategy for police and jails in seven states
I served as Communications Manager for the Advancing Pretrial Policy and Research (APPR) initiative at the Center for Effective Public Policy, funded by the John and Laura Arnold Foundation (now Arnold Ventures), to help police departments and jails in seven states build public communications strategies around bail reform. Bail reform is one of the most contested issues in American criminal justice. The same policy can read as "common-sense reform" in one jurisdiction and "soft on crime" in another, often depending less on the facts than on who is shaping the local narrative.
The work covered:
• marks states where the dominant media frame was tough-on-crime
The proposalDo the media analysis first
I proposed that before we developed messaging, materials, or trainings, we conduct a full media landscape analysis of all seven states. Not a survey. A structured intelligence review of every channel where these communities actually got their news: television, newspapers, radio, podcasts, alternative weeklies, NPR affiliates, academic publications, and the rising independent voices that were beginning to shape opinion outside legacy outlets.
The case I made was simple. You cannot reframe a conversation you have not measured. Without knowing who was talking, what they were saying, and where audiences were paying attention, our messaging would be a guess. With that read in hand, we could either reshape the frame or work within it deliberately.
The methodologyA reproducible question set
I built a framework of questions to apply consistently across all seven states. The framework was deliberately reproducible. The same questions in California, the same questions in Alabama, the same questions in North Carolina. That consistency was what let us compare findings across jurisdictions and identify patterns that no single-state analysis would have surfaced.
The framework went further than coverage analysis. For each jurisdiction, I integrated Pew Research Center audience data on how local adults actually consumed news in that market, alongside the press coverage itself. Most media analysis stops at what reporters write. Mine asked the equally important question: who was receiving it, through which channels, and with what level of trust in their local press? A jurisdiction where 60 percent of adults preferred to get their news via television and news websites required a fundamentally different communications strategy than one where daily newspaper readership was dominant.
I also built a spokesperson analysis into each report. Not just which outlets were covering the issue, but which specific voices were being quoted in those outlets, with what frequency, in what context. Judges, district attorneys, sheriffs, defenders, advocates, formerly incarcerated leaders. The same person can carry very different weight in different markets, and the spokesperson map told us where each jurisdiction's reform leaders would find allies, and where they would face the loudest opposition.
The framework applied to each jurisdiction
- How does the local media frame public discussion of criminal justice reform?
- Who are the main spokespeople on a particular topic, and how are they being quoted?
- Are they mainly advocates, policymakers, academic experts, or someone else?
- How often are various spokespeople quoted, and in what context?
- What topics are being covered, and what topics are being ignored?
- Which outlets are covering or ignoring an issue or organization that they should be covering?
- Is there a time of year when an issue or organization is more likely to be covered than others?
- Is a topic or organization front-page news, and if not, where in the paper is it covered?
- Which reporters are writing on this issue or organization?
- What messages are being used?
What the analysis surfacedThe frame is not the same everywhere
The single most important finding was that the frame varied dramatically by state. In California, Alabama, and Georgia, the dominant media frame was tough-on-crime. Coverage in those states leaned heavily on enforcement voices, episodic crime stories, and policy language that treated reform as risk. In other states, the conversation was more open or more conflicted, which created different openings.
The analysis also surfaced a nuance that simple political-environment assumptions would have missed. North Carolina is a politically conservative state, and Catawba County (one of our research-action sites) is a red county with all-Republican elected officials. But the dominant media frame on bail reform in North Carolina was that money bail is unfair and weighs disproportionately on the poor. Coverage of reform efforts was largely positive. A communications strategy built on the assumption that a red state would equal a hostile media environment would have misread the room. That kind of finding is exactly what the framework was built to surface.
The frame analysis determined strategy. A reform argument that landed cleanly in one state would have been a strategic mistake in another. The media analysis gave each jurisdiction's communications lead a real read on the environment they were operating in, not a guess.
The deliverableState-by-state intelligence and a conference platform
I produced media landscape analyses for each of the seven states, identifying for each one: how people in that state got their news, which outlets and reporters were shaping the criminal justice conversation, what frames were dominant, and where the strategic openings were. The analyses gave police chiefs, jail administrators, and reform leaders the same kind of preparation any senior leader expects before a high-stakes engagement.
I then presented the methodology and findings at two national bail reform convenings, where the framework was received as a reusable model other jurisdictions could apply. That second outcome mattered as much as the first. A communications strategy that helps one client is a deliverable. A communications strategy that other communicators want to copy is a methodology.
Read the work directlyA sample state analysis
Below is the full media landscape analysis for one of the seven research-action sites: Catawba County, North Carolina, published May 2019. It shows the methodology in practice, the integration of Pew Research audience data, the structured spokesperson analysis, and the kind of strategic read each jurisdiction's communications lead received.
As is standard for institutional research products, the Center for Effective Public Policy is named as the publishing author on the cover. I originated the methodology, applied it across all seven states, and authored this report; my authorship is confirmable by reference.