EA will likely get more attention soon

I'm a journalist, and would second this as sound advice, especially the 'guide to responding to journalists'. It explains the pressures and incentives/deterrents we have to work with, without demonising the profession... which I was glad to see! 

A couple of things I would emphasise (in the spirit of mutual understanding!): 

It can help to look beyond the individual journalist to consider the audience we write for, and what our editors' demands might be higher up in the hierarchy. I know many good, thoughtful journalists who work for publications (eg politically partisan newspapers) where they have to present stories the way they do, because that's what their audience/editors demand... There's often so much about the article they, as the reporter, don't control after they file. (Early career journalists in particular have to make these trade-offs, which is worth bearing in mind.) 

Often I would suggest it could be helpful to think of yourself as a guide not a gatekeeper. An obvious point... but this space here [waves arms] is all available to journalists, along with much else in the EA world, via podcasts, public google docs etc. There are vast swathes of material that are already public and all quotable. The community is an unusually online one compared with other fields I report on. It's great! But the problem for a journalist is therefore not really that information is scarce and hard to come by, which you as a source could gatekeep - on the contrary, it's that so much is all already there, and there's far too much of it to digest before a deadline. It means a bad journalist could cherrypick; a hurried journalist could get only a fleeting impression. Generally, what we journalists need is a guide through it all - context, history, depth - so we can form a picture that is fair and accurate. 

With that in mind, I would always advocate for speaking with us face-to-face or via video, rather than emailing...it's just a more human way of connecting, more efficient and responsive, and frankly makes it a little harder for a journalist to ignore your guidance if you have given them your time and shown you are a real person rather than a quote-machine! If a journalist asks for answers to their questions in email, for me that's a sign that they don't have that much of an interest in engaging and learning. I admit I've done it myself sometimes when pressed for time, but it's not good practice. Also it's not serving the needs of audiences/publications because, unless a source is an unusually conversational writer, it leads to flat quotes that are less natural and engaging in tone. 

Last, just to return to the OP, I agree that far more attention is coming. In the past I have observed a sentiment that seems to assume that the EA world can stay under the radar by not engaging. There's perhaps been something to that - insofar it avoids actively advertising – but I'd also say it's as much that relatively few journalists so far have had reason and motivation to look. I'd suggest that will change for a few reasons - there are many great positive and important stories to tell that interest wider audiences, as I've discovered myself, but increasingly also because journalists have a civic duty to write about concentrations of power and money. 

One thing that may backfire with the slow rollout of talking to journalists is that people who mean to write about EA in bad faith will be the ones at the top of the search results. If you search something like “ea longtermism”, you might find bad faith articles many of us are familiar with. I’m concerned we are setting ourselves up to give people unaware of EA a very bad faith introduction.

Note: when I say “bad faith“ here, it may just be a matter of semantics with how some people are seeing it as. I think I might not have the vocabulary to articulate what I mean by “bad faith.” I actually agree with pretty much everything David has said in response to this comment.

Thanks Julia, I think this is really well put. 

Relatedly, trauma circles.

I like trauma circles as a good model for dealing with crises. When someone is in distress you dump (complain, vent, etc) away from them and comfort (listen, graciously help, etc) towards them.  In short, you use your and everyone else's closeness to the crisis to inform your response.

This is also the model I use if someone is angry at me on the internet. I do not want to dump towards them (the centre of the circle) but instead vent towards my friends. If I say anything to them I am first gracious and kind. 

This next point is tricky, but I think worth making.  For me public community spaces are "sideways" of me as regards this model - useful to dump into if necessary but not ideal. When someone is rudely frustrated with EAs on twitter, I generally avoid quote tweeting into the forum or Twitter Community (a new feature for communities on twitter)  because then everyone feels attacked, not just me.  This isn't an iron law -  sometimes the rude criticism is still really instructive, but this is my general heuristic.

My heuristics then:
- if the upset person is a friend comfort them
- if the upset person is not a friend comfort them or say nothing unless I feel  very very competent (I very rarely feel competent enough to challenge directly)
- if the upset person has written something mean, probably don't amplify it
- if I need  to vent, vent away from the upset person
- venting in private is usually better than venting in public
- if I need to vent in public, it's better to talk about my feelings rather than give a play by play of the crisis

I may edit this post based on comments. 

This is a great point. As one example of growing mainstream coverage, here’s a POLITICO Magazine piece on Carrick Flynn’s Congressional campaign. It gives a detailed explanation of effective altruism and longtermism, and seems like a great introduction to the movement for somebody new. The author sounds like he might have collaborated with CEA, but if not, maybe someone should reach out?

https://www.politico.com/news/magazine/2022/05/12/carrick-flynn-save-world-congress-00031959

Thanks, Julia! The  "Advice for responding to journalists" doc you link is really excellent. Everyone should read this before speaking to the media. https://docs.google.com/document/d/1GlVEKYdJU2LqE6tXPPay_2tBmJTQrsQxAO27ZaeKAQk/edit#heading=h.86t1p0fnb9uz

Some advice I would add: if a journalist asks to interview you, try to understand where they are in their research. 

Do they have a narrative that they are already committed to and they're just trying to get a juicy quote from you? If so, it might not make sense to talk to them since they might twist whatever you say to fit the story they have already written.

Alternatively, are they in information gathering mode and are honestly trying to understand a complex issue? If they have not written their story yet and you think you can give them information that will make their writing more accurate, then it makes more sense to do an interview. 
 

I’m assuming and hoping Julia Wise or the respective team here has strong and adequate staffing.

I’ve got this worrying mental picture of Wise carrying both the community health and international public relations team as a one woman show, like with a headset, three keyboards and seven monitors typing furiously.

Honestly, I also low key want there to be strong people working for Wise, so we can refer to the resulting apparatus with awesome names:

• Department of The Wise
• The Wise Empire
• The Era of Wise EA
• Wisely, EA succeeds

Is there much ongoing outreach to journalists about EA projects which are really good according to most ethical views?

Eg - about Alvea, updates on CE-incubated charities, updates on Givewell’s donations, about how EA-affiliated people advised the UK government on COVID, animal welfare wins, etc

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: 

1. 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.
2. 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.

Several EA organizations are working together with a communications advising firm to answer questions like

• Who are key audiences we especially want to reach?
• How do these audiences currently see EA?
• What are the best ways to reach these audiences?
• What EA ideas are especially important to convey?

I hope EA orgs end up sharing their new best guesses regarding these questions with the broader community, or at least reach out to smaller and newer organizations dedicated to outreach so that they can scale their outreach in a good direction and self-correct more easily.

HI,

Could you clarify your section about connecting projects with journalists? I am not sure I understand entirely what you are looking for. Are there are particular journalists you have connections with already, is there a particular geography or topic you are thinking of, etc.?

 Also, does this meant that CEA wants to coordinate and do  outreach on behalf of all affiliated organizations and groups?

Thanks so much!

Charlie

Thank you Julia for this well-written post! I had been considering writing something along these lines (because of the increase in EAs working in policy and under public scrutinee), and I am very, very glad that this is not only taken seriously, but also actively being worked on.  

Thank you so much for this extremely important and helpful guide on EA messaging, Julia! I really appreciate it, and hope all EAs read it asap.

Social opinion dynamics seem to have the property where some action (or some inaction) can cause EA to move into a different equilibrium, with a potentially permanent increase or decrease in EA’s outreach and influence capacity. We should therefore tread carefully.

Unfortunately, social opinion dynamics are also extremely mysterious. Nobody knows precisely what action or what inaction possesses the risk of permanently closing some doors to additional outreach and influence. Part of the system is likely inherently unpredictable, but people are almost certainly not near the optimal level of knowledge about predicting such social opinion dynamics.

But perhaps EA movement-builders are already using and improving a cutting-edge model of social opinion dynamics!