2nd opinion: Airwaves to heaven

I love housing association newsletters. The glossy paper. The pictures of smiling chief executives doing their "I'm a top-flight executive but also a deeply caring human being" expressions. The cosy group of tenants being consulted about something momentous. The pie charts that the finance director knows will convince everyone that this happy ship is staying afloat. How on earth can it be that our sector has such a poor image when the in-house magazines are telling such a positive story?

Perhaps it's the media's fault. When did you last switch on the Today programme and hear a good news story about housing associations, or see a positive attitude to social housing on national television? Maybe we should all write to the Beeb to ask for a new peak-time show called Neighbours from Heaven.

Forget it. We don't get our message across because our communications strategies are poor. And our strategies are poor because we focus on in-house vanity publications and flagship national broadcasting, and that just isn't how most people get their news and form their opinions. Nor are they the best way to communicate with the people we really need to get on our side – the residents and representatives of the neighbourhoods within which we have, or hope to have, properties in management.

Let me tell you a couple of stories from my "day job". A few months ago I travelled to Manchester to record an interview for a major programme. When it was finally broadcast, my 25-minute interview had been reduced to a single, unrepresentative soundbite, itself lost in a plethora of contradictory voices and opinions. By contrast, not long afterwards I was allowed to pontificate (that's a proper word for bishops speaking in public!) on a regional radio programme at prime time for a whole hour, with no editing. And the local programme will have had a far larger audience in my diocese than the more prestigious national one.

The second story comes from a report by one of my vicars. In it he described how he had transformed a traditional church magazine into a widely read local newspaper. I'm not in the least surprised that this change coincided with a significant influx of new people into his church. The fact is that most people, in any locality, pick up their local news from local papers. Just like local radio, there is much less competition for space, and a much higher proportion of articles are the sort of "good news" we want to promote.

So if you want to take communications seriously, don't waste time moaning about poor coverage of housing issues in the national media, and don't sink valuable staff resources into glossy newsletters with narrow circulations. Get to know the reporters on your local radio stations.

Find out which papers are read in your neighbourhoods and start feeding them good news stories. Even little stories, as long as there's a genuine local element, can find space. And I'd be prepared to bet that even your tenants are more likely to trust a story about you in the local paper than one in an in-house magazine.

So let's hear it for the Stourbridge News, the Halesowen Chronicle and the Kidderminster Shuttle. They're as effective in reaching their own local communities as is that other great organ of the press which brings together board members, housing workers, chief executives and external partners and keeps us in touch across the sector's own neighbourhood – our very own Housing Today.