WATCH FOR NEWS DUMPS — We're all obsessed with the elephant and donkey in the room. Americans are about to elect KAMALA HARRIS or DONALD TRUMP. It's an uncertain, anxious, exciting, depressing, angering, inspiring Election Day. Harris v. Trump is pretty much the ball game this week. — Put another way: These are "absolutely ideal" conditions for a government or corporation to slip bad news under the radar, says Pendulum Group co-founder YAROSLAV BARAN. "Anything else that the government announces or discloses or files or tables that is off that topic is going to get very, very little attention," says Baran. "By the time our media landscape normalizes, it risks being old news." In Hill jargon, Baran is describing a "trash day" — a phrase popularized in part by an early episode of "The West Wing." → Likely targets: Wednesday … or Thursday … or Friday. Or even this evening, says Oyster Group co-founder AMANDA GALBRAITH, since most politicos will be distracted by watch parties. (Maybe we'll see you at one.) Baran and Galbraith are both veterans of Conservative comms shops on Parliament Hill. — Work the calendar: The Prime Minister's Office cultivates a weekly schedule that matches ministers and MPs with events and preferred message tracks. They "minimize competition" for the headlines they want by clearing the decks, Baran says. Exhibit A: The annual pre-budget blackout on announcements. "You can't always control the facts. You can't always control events. But you can control timing, competition and your response," he says. If bad news is afoot? Governments look for a "headline grabber that deflects attention away from what [they] don't want to be talking about." — How to bury news: Publish a press release, but don't distribute it widely. Announce several things on the same day, forcing newsrooms to triage and divide resources. Plan something for Friday afternoon, ideally ahead of a long weekend, to take advantage of understaffed newsrooms with limited bandwidth. (Next Monday is a federal holiday.) Galbraith strategically targeted "dump days" for afternoons. "I would do it late enough that it made it tough for folks to get any other sources on the story, but not so late that it made it impossible to get the news out," she says. → Diminishing returns: Trash days worked like a charm before the internet. But this news biz isn't that news biz. "You can't just dump [a story] at 5 o'clock and assume everybody puts their typewriters away and goes home. That's not how it works anymore. People can still tweet and push news out. They can save stories and push them later on," says Galbraith. Playbook fact-check: True. — The even quieter option: Sometimes governments skip the press release. The labyrinthine network of federal websites is full of nooks and crannies. Galbraith name-checked the Canada Gazette , a weekly digest of new government laws, regulations, tribunals and public notices. The Gazette is little-known outside of Ottawa, and only the geekiest Hill journalists give it a scroll. This week, we'll also watch for new Cabinet orders. → Courtroom drama: It's never a bad idea to sort through legal filings on a trash day, Galbraith adds. — Eyes open: You never know what you'll find when most people are looking the other way.
But a word to the wise for comms pros: Don't get caught hyping a trash day.
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