133: The Best Police Media Relations Tips and Social Media Strategies with Julie Parker

If there was ever a group in need of media and PR assistance, it's law enforcement. Four Minneapolis police officers, including Derek Chauvin, have been indicted on federal rights charges, civil rights charges, for the arrest and death of George Floyd.

Mr. City Manager, Mr. Mayor, when I asked that question about the firing of the police officer, the police chief left.

Yeah.

What is that an indication of? Is he dealing with something perhaps more important, or is that some type of silent protest?

Because. Left immediately. Immediately.

I can't speculate. I'm back. I'm sorry I left. I'm used to doing the handoff with the bca, and I apologize for that. Normally the BCA steps in and they do a lot of the talk about the investigations. That's what I'm used to. So I apologize for that. But I'm back here now.

Welcome to the Confident Communications podcast, where we help communicators create the right response at the right time and and deliver it in the right place. On the podcast this week, discussing the best social media strategies for public agencies, specifically law enforcement. My guest, Julie Parker has a media career that spans from an Emmy and Edward R. Murrow award winning television reporter stint in Washington D.C. to being a media director for two of our nation's largest police departments. And you have to forgive me, in this interview, I stopped it a few times dead in its tracks because we were both working in the D.C. market at the same time. She was a reporter, I was working in communications and I had to ask her about cases she was involved in, including the D.C. sniper case. So for anyone who lived in D.C. during that case, oh my goodness, it never leaves you. So that's why I had to creep it in there. But we also talked about the Boston Marathon bombing and there's so much to discuss in this episode. Reporters and PIOs, they have the best stories and Julie has done so much work in this area and she is bringing it in this interview. After 13 years in news, Julie joined the Prince George's County Police Department as its Chief spokesperson and Director of Media Relations. Such a cool job. Her work there was instrumental in changing both the internal culture and the public perception of the agency by developing these policies and these recognized communication efforts that results in a better reputation and also a better relationship with the media. She was also named best police flag by the Washington City Paper. So now she's a senior media advisor to a number of police associations and agencies. She is a subject matter expert on crisis communications, social media and relations. You know, particularly when it comes to public agencies and law enforcement. So when her name was suggested to me for the podcast to discuss media relations and law enforcement, it came to me during the Derek Chauvin trial. I said, this is a person I need to speak to. And Julie is a person you need to listen to. Take a listen. Julie Parker. I already know before we've even started speaking that I could speak to you for days about your experience.

Okay, let's do it.

Wouldn't that be quite a podcast if it just went on for days?

Will you pay me? Yeah.

Be a lot of money because there's a lot of stories here. One of the reasons personally why I find this fascinating is because you are someone who can speak to leveraging social media in a crisis, just for one, something I'm very interested in. But also you have an experience with helping PIOs, public information officers, law enforcement officers with their social media use. You have experience with that. But also you got your start in the media, so you have that perspective. So, Julia, where did your career trajectory start?

I would say, well, certainly my social media career started at WJLATV in Washington D.C. the ABC affiliate. I'm old enough that Twitter started while I was a reporter and I adopted that platform very early on. So much so that I was the Twitter geek in the newsroom. Like, no one really knew what it was and why are you on it and what are you doing with it? I didn't know what I was doing either because it just started. But the thought was, when we're not on Air at 5 or 6 or 11pm we still have stuff that we're learning out in the field. There's stuff to report on just because you're not on the air. So I thought I'd use that platform as a way to share news as I went about the process of gathering.

The news now before that. So this is where our paths somewhat intersect. So I was in Washington D.C. at the same time and reading your bio. I looked at some of your content and I watched a video from WJJLA during the D.C. sniper.

Yeah.

Shootings. I mean that even as I say that, it brings a chill. And I was watching some of your footage. Now I always have to go back in my brain. I thought, okay, where was I at that point? And that's when I was the director of communication for the cruise line industry. So I was working in Arlington. And that was not a social media crisis story.

Correct.

That was a local news story. Correct.

Very quickly national, Very quickly international.

Yes, but it was like a broadcast only story. It was news or it was newspaper of Course, you know, radio, local television, international student news. It took over the entire D.C. metro area. And even driving around at that time. And just as a weird factoid on that, when the D.C. sniper happened, the one. And I don't know if you covered it, when there was the shooting in Manassas at the gas station, it was like a. So get it. Were you at that gas station?

So I went there the morning after I worked morning live shots during the D.C. sniper period. And I went on CNN in Northern Virginia one of those days after the shootings there.

So I was at the gas station across the street an hour before that shooting happened in Manassas. I mean, I know it's just crazy. And then the. I guess everyone has a story when they lived in Washington, D.C. about the sniper. And then the next one that happened in Bethesda, I was supposed to go to a doctor's appointment. My daughter, you know, was. I was pregnant with my daughter and it got canceled. They said, oh, you can't go to this appointment because someone was killed, you know, down the street. I mean, so really that that story impacted so many people, everyone. So I can't imagine reporting for it. So the reason why I bring it up, one, I just. It's so interesting and watching your footage from. But that was not a social media story, but you did become a social media reporter. You utilized it. And when you were using Twitter is when I was in D.C. using it for FEMA. So I was just like you learning it at the same time understanding it. So why I wanted to bring you on today. Well, one of many reasons is you truly understand the trajectory of social media, how to use it. It's how to use it in its infancy and how much it's changed. But I wanted to speak with you about how to use it in a crisis. But I want to have that law enforcement angle coming in because so many people are familiar, you know, with the stories that are happening right now. And there are some questions I want to ask you about law enforcement's use of social media.

Where do you want to start? So Twitter used to be an entirely different platform than it is today, and it has become a really angry place. So regardless, I think of what industry you're in and whether you're in the media or you're working for a government organization. Certainly if you're in law enforcement, you have to be educated about what you're doing and don't put people in positions of power, which is behind the phone or the laptop when it comes to social media. And I think so often I can't speak to, to corporate because I focus so much of my time on public information officers and government. It is such a critically important role today that sometimes I think gets overlooked by the powers that be. It can't be a throwaway position.

Can I ask you, Julie, though, you said don't put a person in power behind the social media. Did I get that right?

You did. Because how powerful is the person who is, who is wielding the phone or the laptop? Who's in charge of your social media platforms? You know, one tweet, one misstep can cause incredible damage to a reputation.

Then who should be manning the social media? And I think we should look at it from the pio. I mean, I speak corporate all the time here, but the public information officer is slightly different, you know, than, than someone who just works in corporate pr. Who is the person, if we had to think at a, at a police department, who is the person manning social media then?

Well, it certainly varies across the country. It depends on resources, the size of departments. You have a mix of sworn or police officers who are doing that job, and civilians. And very often the civilians who are brought into a law enforcement agency used to be reporters. It's a natural progression to go from a newsroom to a police department. I didn't know it really at the time when I did it in 2011. Think about how long ago 2011 scene? You know, it's a decade. But at that time, there were not a lot of former reporters becoming heads of media relations bureaus in the two police departments where I worked. I had the tremendous fortune to oversee really large media relations divisions. There are 18,000 police agencies across the country. 18,000. And so, so many of them are 10, 20, 30 officers. And so they're not going to get that kind of fortune to have a team of public information officers. So on the smaller agencies, very often you have someone literally who is in charge of the robbery section, but also is a public information officer. And whether that's because they have the skill set to gather the news from their department and to, to determine what and how to share information with the public. Because they've got a great personality, they're outgoing, everyone likes them. I mean, there's a ton of different reasons why people are selected for the role, but whomever is at the helm has got to have the emotional maturity to handle just the social media portion of the job alone.

Define emotional maturity because it is such.

A volatile place now and there's so much emotion and intense feelings and certainly if you're working in law enforcement in 2021, you are feeling what's going on across the country, and people have no problem telling you what they think. And it may be about your particular department, or it may be about a department that did something across the country that's become a national news story, and the people who are in your community are just lashing out at the police.

Yeah, understood. So back in 2014, the Washington Post did a story, and you were a part of the story when you were at Prince George's county, and it was an article about leveraging social media to change its reputation, and you were a big part of. Of bringing social media to that unit. Now back in 2014, when you had this job, and it's a great article, by the way. I love the idea of a tweet along. Was that your idea? Yeah, it's such a good idea. Explain what a tweet along is.

So. And let me be clear, I didn't invent that idea. At that time, there were a few departments across the country who were trying to find innovative ways to get their story out. And what you want to do is bring the public to you to get them to have a better understanding of how it all works. So anything that I did in that job, I was never trained on how to be a media relations director. I just went from the newsroom to a police department. And my mentality the whole time was, we need to be the reporters of our department. So telling the public what's happening with the department, whether there's a shooting on Main street, or an officer's been given an award for running into a burning building, or we need to corral the information, make sure that it's safe for release, meaning you're not going to jeopardize an investigation which was, you know, those were some of the most interesting conversations I had as I first joined a police department, because as a former reporter, I want to put out everything, like, everything. And so you can imagine the heads of the Criminal Investigation Division, like, who is this person? What is a tweet along? And no, just. No, no, just no. We're not going to put out all of these facts about whatever the investigation is, whether it's a robbery or a. Or a homicide, frankly. So the thought was to share our news in ways that we could let the public in a little bit and get a better understanding of what happens day to day on a department. And so we did that, and we used social media to do it, and we had to think about things like you can't tweet from the scene of. Let's say it's a traffic stop. You don't want to announce where you are, exactly what you're doing in the event that you're someplace where people don't like the police, and you don't want to necessarily invite them to your traffic stop at that moment. So we had to think about things like timing. So 20 minutes ago, we were at Location X. Since then, this has happened. And incorporating video, photos, and just facts.

So many considerations even to this day about maintaining privacy, safety. And I know there's, you know, concerns internally that a photo or a video could expose the department in some ways, you know, just legally or even from a complaint point of view. But from reading this article, whether it was pitched or not or they found you, it definitely was shaping the reputation of Prince George's county and their law enforcement, and in a. In a very, very positive way. Now, that was in 2014. And if I just memory serves, law enforcement had a much different reputation than it does today. So now when you are training, instructing, working with police departments, what are you telling them about social? It's. Since it is so much more volatile, there's different rules that apply. What are you telling them?

I'll give you a perfect example that I saw this morning. So every. Every day I wake up and I look at Twitter and I see what's trending. And in the course of doing that sort of research for the day, you'll come across a whole host of stories to include about law enforcement. And I noticed that there is a particular national news story surrounding a department that has the same name. The city has the same name as a department that I just did training for a couple of weeks ago. They're in two different states, but the city and the police department's name is the same. I shot a text with the story to the police chief where I just trained and said, heads up, make sure that you're monitoring social media today so that people don't confuse your department with this other department that has a negative story that's on national media outlets that I would imagine is only going to take off. And so if that department, the one that I trained, didn't have that awareness and wasn't thinking to be monitoring social media, there could be a whole conversation about this Maryland department that isn't even about them. But if they're not looking for it, they don't know it's happening. And you need to have people on social media who get that, who know how to go digging, because if you're not tagged in a tweet, it doesn't mean the story's not happening about you. If someone doesn't tag you in a tweet, they can still be damaging your reputation incorrectly.

Did you break the news to them that this was happening, or did anyone already know?

I haven't heard back from her. This was not that long ago. So what I hope is that she took that and immediately sent it to the sergeant who's, who's in charge to make sure that they're on the lookout.

So would you encourage them to post anything on their social medias to diminish the confusion?

So I would start with monitoring, see what's happening. One, watch the other state with the same name to see how widely that story is taking off, which is an indication that you're probably going to wind up with people mistaking you for them. And then two, I use a platform called tweetdeck, where you have columns of who you follow, who you're following, direct messages. You can set up search categories. So I would search for that particular department's name, both of them, actually, and see if the Maryland agency, if they were cropping up being mistaken for this other department's name, and if you find that it's starting to take off in a bad way for you, then I would seriously consider putting out some sort of message that doesn't necessarily call out the other department, but just says, you know, there's stories circulating today. We have a common name. We're the, you know, blank department in Maryland, and we look forward to seeing you when you come, you know, some sort of, like, nice tagline with it and just placing it on your platforms so that people, if they go searching, would see that.

I would do the same. I would absolutely 100% do the same. Now, I want to talk to you about things that agencies should do on social media during a crisis. I do want to look at it, though, through the lens of a police department, because I know there are people who work in law enforcement or who work at public agencies who I know would, would benefit from this. But also because the perception of law enforcement is so strained, I think people. It will help people understand what they're up against as well. Now, before we get into those four things, I do want to ask you this question because you are so attuned to how police departments should be using social media. There's been a lot of cases obviously of law enforcement brutality. Former officer Derek Chauvin also, what happened in Brooklyn Center, I'M assuming you're tracking all of those stories, correct?

Yes.

Do you use that in your training, like as examples?

There are, you know, there are infinite examples of good and bad things to point to. I think the, if I could point to one thing for law enforcement in general as it relates to social media, it goes back to who you're putting in charge of those platforms. It matters so much. And ideally, you know, I say ideally because resources are always going to be an issue. Ideally, you have the ability to put someone in charge who has this news minded sense so that they are looking for what's going on not just in their city, not just in their state, but, but nationally because everything, all politics are local. Well, if something's going on across the country, it didn't used to matter. And I say matter meaning for your particular agency, but it does matter today. And what's going on in. If you're on the east coast and something's breaking on the west coast, let's say it's a use of force issue on the west coast. It's important for the people who are in charge of social media to have that situational awareness. Maybe today is not the day you're tweeting out about National Donut Day. And that's just a cute example of people being cognizant of what's trending, what is going on not only in the national news, your local news, but on social media, where so often news breaks first. National news tends to be slower, to catch up. You know, you've seen stories two or three days ago on social that for whatever reason only then gets to be on the national news. Well, if you are a public information officer and you're, you're scouring social media among the 400 other jobs you're doing that day, you can help prepare your agency before it breaks on tv.

Having a good sense of your social surroundings. Now, there was an incident in Brooklyn Center, Minnesota. I'm assuming you were following the Dante Wright case and what was happening there. Now, something that I noticed and I saw this on Twitter, actually posted by the person who suggested you for this podcast. It was his post and he noticed it was that the Brooklyn Center Police Department, they took down their Facebook page the day that this story broke. Were you aware of that? Like, were you following that at all?

I heard after the fact.

You heard after the fact. Okay, so tell me if you could. You're not in that department. You're not standing there, you're not talking to the police chief who eventually, Tim Gannon, he Submitted his resignation. So it's very easy to be an armchair quarterback on this when you're not there, you're not on the scene. However, they didn't have a good, they didn't have a good press relation, media relations strategy. I mean, clearly, what would you say about that? Like, they were under such extreme pressure. They had a police officer and again, this is small world stuff. I'm from Minnesota, so like, I knew people who, the officer knew people who knew that. I mean, it's just crazy how it was happening. But tell me about, just give us a sense of what it would be like in that department when something like this happens. A national story, a shooting, it's on the heels of George Floyd. My goodness, it's a suburb of Minneapolis, while the case of Derek Chauvin, Derek Chauvin's case is going on.

It is a tremendous amount of pressure. Tremendous. And it's, and it's really hard to explain unless you've been in that agency shoes or frankly been through any sort of social media crisis. The public information officers across the country are so dedicated to what they do. It is so not a 9 to 5 job. It's constant. I mean, social media is constant. And therefore if you are doing that job and you're doing it well, you are constantly monitoring. And so I can't imagine the pressure or where it came from that they felt they needed to pull their page.

So, Julie, let's say the former police chief, Tim Gannon, contacted you that afternoon and said, what do we do? What do we say on social media right now? He did a presser stating, you know, so he did, you know, traditional media relations. But while he was on the air, their Facebook page was down, which is not, in my opinion. They don't have a grasp of the enormity of press at that point because as you know, you know this firsthand, reporters go to social media. That's the first place they go sometimes. Right. What would you have instructed him to do?

I would, I would always advise any department. Don't, don't pull your page. Don't pull your page because your page is your ability to share information. And even if you go dark, which I also would not recommend, you know, information matters and people want to hear from the involved parties. And if you pull your page, what does that say to the public?

Exactly. Perception we're covering, the COVID up has already begun.

There's no way you win. I understand why it happens. And who knows what elected officials might be saying. You don't know where that decision comes from.

That's a good point.

It could be ordered by your elected leaders to pull it. Well then you listen to your bosses. Right. But I would always encourage any agency, not just police, any, any corporate, anyone. Leave your page intact. You will get through whatever the storm is. But ideally you, you have that tool to be able to tell your story. If they went out and did a news conference, they had something they wanted to share. Well, you can also do that on social media. Now, if it seems like the weight of the world is on your shoulders and everyone is against you, social media is going to be rocky. There's no question that that is going to be a challenge. Let's just call it that. Yeah, but I recommend yanking your page.

Yeah, it's covered. Especially for a public agency. It's their, it's their duty to inform people. And also it doesn't. It. You no longer have a platform to correct the record.

Exactly right.

You know, to, to, to tell your side of the story. Okay, so let's get to the four things that we'll just say a public agency. I mean you say law enforcement, but also let's just call it a public agency. We'll. We'll spread it out a little. What should they be doing on social media during. And we'll call it an active incident. I will crisis, but all eyes are on an incident. The press, the public. What should they be doing on social media?

Number one, using it too often. At least I'll say in government, the, the mindset goes to the media rather than the public because the pressures of the media are intense, especially when there's an active breaking situation. But my mentality is always both. It's twofold. I want to use social media to be able to tell my story, and I want to use or work with the media to tell my story. And ideally you're using both at the same time. Think about anything that's breaking across the country. You don't live in that particular media market. You have no access to. To potentially, unless they're streaming, you have no access to whatever news is being shared on that local level. So you turn to their, their social media platforms. I'll take an old example, but a very powerful example, which is the Boston Marathon bombing. I distinctly remember watching it on national news and watching it on Twitter. And that department sort of paved the way for how law enforcement can use social media to tell the public what's happening. And it's become a case study because it was one of the first, if not the first on a big scale to use social media in that way. And so, number one, post your basic facts and post whatever your call to action might be. So in 2016, we had an active shooter outside our police station in Prince George's County. And so we used Twitter, just as we always had to break our news, to explain that that was underway and that people who lived on that block in homes needed to shelter in place. And so that's a very, you know, clear example of one simple way to use social media. But the importance of it is to do it in a timely manner.

Right, Right. What a good example. Your trainings must be so fascinating. You must bring in the Boston Marathon shooting in there, because that's true, of course, living here, you know, at the time, watching it live and watching it online and following it on social media that they were looking for them. And again, you're local. I have friends, like, living down the street in Watertown when it was, I mean, just crazy. But, Julie, I mean, I don't want to get stuck on one, but you bring up a really good point that. And again, this hearkens back to the time, you know, you were working. You were working in the media in D.C. i was working in public affairs, knowing that the, the formidable press, I mean, that's where everyone put their energy. But nowadays, the people, the public, have just as much power and clout on social as the press does. You have to. You have to serve both. You're absolutely right, Julie. Okay, what is number two, then?

So particularly when you've got a major event, telling the media where to go is important. You're not going to have time. I mean, forget about email. You're not going to have time to answer all of the calls that are coming at you. And so Twitter can be a lifesaver during a critical incident. And so use that platform to tell media where to go. You don't have to answer 27 calls about, are we going to meet at first in Maine or whatever. So that's a basic. Every police department comes up with a media staging area. Use social media to get that out to the media.

Great, great tip. And that is true. I work with a producer from one of the network news channels, and she tells me the same thing. She said her media relations is no longer the day of press releases and calling up, you know, the pio. It's, I'm going to Twitter, show me the staging information on Twitter, and that's where we're going. So, yeah, you're absolutely right, Julie. Okay, what about number three?

So this all of the Detectives and investigators in the world will appreciate this. You don't want to tell too much too soon. And I, and I say that from an investigation standpoint, you can't jeopardize a criminal investigation by pushing out everything. And so the PIO needs to be very closely tied to one, the chief of police, but two, the head of criminal investigations. Working together ideally long before the crisis hits, working together to know each other, to know when to press and when to pull back. And both sides need to understand what the other one needs. So all of those relationship issues need to be worked out in advance of the critical issue, critical incident, so that the PIO very quickly can say I'm about to put out this particular thing about this homicide. You good, good, go. And so things happen quickly because you've already set up that relationship internally.

And now remembering going back to the DC sniper with Charles Moose and the press conferences and you would know this much better than me. But at the time, if memory serving me correctly, was he was either giving too much information or too little. Like what was happening there, I can't remember. But he was the, the, he was the primary spokesperson it seemed at all times, but sometimes did, did he give too much information? Like can you just as it relates today too, is that an example of someone who managed it well with keeping information in without impacting the investigation.

Here's what I would use about. And I, and I talk about this when traveling across the country. The way that the, the DC media market learned about that investigation was through orchestrated frequent news conference out of Rockville, out of the police headquarters. And what they did that I think was different for that time is they would announce we're going to have an update at 2 4pm, 6pm, 11pm frequent updates. Even if at 2 o' clock they said we were last with you at noon, we promised you we'd be back here at 2. There's nothing new to report. And why that worked so well was that police. Well, media outlets would have reporters. For example, I would be at the scene at 4 o' clock in the morning of the shooting the day before. But the dayside reporters who start at 8 or 9am they would go directly to headquarters and they would that their assignment that day was to be at headquarters all day long getting the updates from the police and then dispersing them throughout the Channel 7 at the time, wherever they, wherever people worked. And so you had reporters everywhere, all over the place, but you always had a reporter stationed at headquarters to get the update. As soon as that update happened. And it became a really good sort of textbook example of how law enforcement can keep the media and the public informed even when there's nothing to report. Because so often reporters who are on deadline now constantly because they're also breaking news on social. So often the fact that there is no update, there is no new information is an update.

Correct.

When you have an event as huge as the DC sniper case because people were glued to their TVs and radios, they.

They absolutely were. What a time capsule of a story. And even when you're mentioning that someone is sitting, you know, sitting at the station all day and people are running around. But how different it is now with social media where you don't have reporter, you know, you're using reporters in a much different way. All right, so let's go to four then. What is something.

What's the last thing this sometimes gets overlooked? It's maintaining communication throughout the incident and once it ends. So if you think about it from a reporter's perspective or the public's perspective, it's a story. Whatever the incident is, it all breaks down to. It's an event, it's a story. It has a beginning, a middle and an end. And again, due to resources or what have you, sometimes you miss the middle and the end on social media because you get drawn toward the traditional media. And so while you may announce that you have something breaking on social media, sometimes you, whether you forget or you just can't get to it, or whatever the case may be, it's really important to close that loop so that people know about the good work that you're doing. They know what your department is doing to solve that case, to, to bring the, the bad guys to justice. And, and, you know, ultimately what, what the police officers did to help resolve this issue, and it's, it's reporting about your police department on your terms. So I don't have to wait for Channel 4 or WTOP to, to tell the story. I'm also telling it. I'm not, I'm not shunning the media by any means. I'm still working very closely with them, but I'm also reporting the news from the police department.

So, Julie, these points are so applicable to so many different areas. I mean, but clearly for law enforcement and government agencies. So one is you want to mention the facts, put all the basic facts that you have out there. Also be mindful of the media. Use it as a tool for the media. Set up your staging, your pressers, any type of information. Press, press is watching the flow of information. You don't want to put too much out there, but you want to put enough out there to satisfy. And then that last piece of maintaining the communications, that's a good one. You're just because you put one post on social media doesn't mean you're done. It's not like faxing one press release. It has to be maintained. But all of the things, what I hear you saying is these are all excellent media relation tips. However, it's also excellent information for how to frame a reputation of an agency.

You've got to tell your story whatever your story is, and that includes if your story isn't flattering to your agency. And I found that one of the ways that we helped the community believe us and listen to us was when if we had made a mistake, let's say an officer had done something wrong, we came out, the police chief came out and said, this is what happened, this is how we found out about it, this is what we're doing about it and this is how we're going to try to prevent this from ever happening again. And so you can't just tell your good news and you can't just tell the breaking news. You have to tell the news about when something goes wrong because that's really where you start to get trust.

Oh, without a doubt, Julie. We think a lot alike on this and you are fascinating. Like I said, I could talk to you about this for days. I mean this is like my special wheelhouse, like excitement place too because it's so rich. I mean just talking about breaking news and the lessons learned in breaking news and how you can apply it to future breaking news. Julie share with me if someone wanted to work with you, particularly in law enforcement, my goodness. Share with me information about what you do for work right now.

So this morning I was writing an article for a national law enforcement publication. This week I did six hours of workshops with police PIOs to help create some sort of guidelines for the for the profession. I've got multiple law enforcement clients who I will advise on media issues as well as social media. I'm managing some social media platforms for a university's law enforcement page. I think that's this week I talked to you.

That's a week. Well, how can people reach you? Where can they find out more information about you?

Julie ParkerCommunications.com is my website. I'm very active on social media, particularly Twitter. Julie Parker Comm, that's C O M M and LinkedIn.

Are there a lot of people doing.

What you do there are more than ever before, for sure. When I was, you know, back when I was a dinosaur in 2011, going from the newsroom to a police department media relations director, it was very unusual. And now it's becoming more and more the norm. And while there are tremendously talented sworn or police officer public information officers across the country, I have a, you know, a little bit of a bias for former reporters who become the face of the department and the, the person behind the phone doing social media for departments.

Yeah, I, I, I would agree. And not only that, there's something special about our age and experience of working with people who work so deeply in a different media environment and understanding it and then, and then followed it along while social media became so powerful. So I'm, I have bias to our generation as well and our experience. So, Julie, thank you so much for taking the time to speak with me on the podcast because really, I wanted to squeeze you in because I thought not only was this interesting for me, but it's so timely considering what's happening in law enforcement right now and the severe reputation issue, you know, that they're having. And these tips to help, you know, inform the public really does shape the reputation of the agencies out there. So thank you so much for sharing that message.

You're so welcome. And my tagline is tell your story. Tell your story.

Well, thank you for telling your story to my listeners. It was very interesting. Thanks.

Thanks, Molly.

My thanks to Julie Parker again. You can connect with Julie on twitter@julie parkercom with two M's or at her website, julie parkercommunications.com remember, you can follow me on Twitter @molly mcpherson and if you're not on Twitter, I know, I know people are complaining about it. We heard in this interview that it, it can be somewhat of a prickly place to reside socially. But there's a lot of information that can be found there and a lot of information that can help you in your work, especially in communications. That's how I found out about Julie. When I was tweeting about what was happening in the Derek Chauvin case and police and just, you know, police interaction on social media, one of my followers reached out to me about Julie and that is how we connected. And I'm so happy he made that connection. And I have to add a, a big thank you to everyone who bought the book. My book, Indestructible. Reclaim Control and Respond with Confidence in Immediate Crisis. The presale is out and it already is out of stock in the hardcover. So I know by the time you hear this, it will be restocked. But thank you so much for purchasing the book. And remember, you can go to my website, just go right on the main page. If you upload the receipt, you will get direct links that I'll be launching soon to A Insider's Guide to the Book where I will be updating the chapters in real time with real stories and real lessons that you can use now. And if you bought the book, please leave a review on Amazon. I would love to know your feedback. Tell me what you think. All right everyone, thanks so much for listening. Bye for now.