The Sunday, September 29, 2013, online version of the Idaho Statesman has a very interesting and informative article headlined Are Idaho’s public information officers public servants or spin doctors? The well-written and quite detailed article was written by Sven Berg.  The headline is a good indicator of the article’s content.

As expected, the Statesman listed numbers for only local agencies in the Treasure Valley and for statewide agencies.

OpenCdA is not sure that the City of Coeur d’Alene has any professionally trained public information officers for either the City as a whole or for any of its individual agencies.  OpenCdA understands that the City’s contract with its most recent Propagandist-in-Chief will not be renewed.

While living in southern California and working very closely with the Los Angeles City Fire Department, we had the privilege of also witnessing the work some of the finest and most professional public information officers in the nation.  They included Captain Jim Wells, Captain Steve Ruda,  and Firefighter Brian Humphrey.   Idaho’s PR flacks/wannabe PIOs could learn from them.