This week, Eno held a webinar, “Transportation in the News: Shaping and Covering the Stories,” about how reporters and public agencies cover transportation policies, programs, projects, and major incidents. The discussion featured two local reporters (Larry Higgs from NJ.com and Rachel Swan from the San Francisco Chronicle) and one national reporter (Andrew Hawkins from The Verge). A fourth panelist, Jawauna Greene, leads the Office of Public Affairs at the Maryland Department of Transportation.  

Andrew Hawkins, The Verge	Jawauna Greene, Maryland DOT	Larry Higgs, NJ.com	Rachel Swan, S.F. Chronicle

The panelists shared five important lessons about how the media covers transportation, and the relationship between transportation agencies and reporters. 

Lesson #1: Transportation is a broad, political, and cultural beat. 

Hawkins focuses on technology-related transportation stories, such as robotaxis, autonomous vehicles, ride-hailing, and the dramatic policy shifts affecting battery-electric vehicles. He said driving and car ownership have been “sucked into the broader culture wars.” Swan made a similar point. The Bay Area is now grappling with how to save its regional rail network, and California’s high-speed rail proposal “has become an incredible, polarizing political issue.” 

Jawauna Greene said everything in transportation can be considered political, such as what to do with projects inherited from a previous administration and how to successfully deliver them. Higgs talked about how New Jersey officials fought “tooth and nail” against New York’s congestion pricing program, because they viewed it as a tax on their commuters. He said transportation agencies can become politicized, such as when New Jersey’s former governor said he would fix New Jersey Transit, “even if it kills me.” All of a sudden, Higgs said, everything the transit agency did became a political imperative. 

Lesson #2. Reporters need transportation stories that readers will click on. 

Swan said her favorite transportation stories are about human engagement. When she first started covering transportation, she was not so excited about it. The topic seemed dry, and much of the engineering terminology was unfamiliar to her. But, she said, “It turns out that it’s a beat people really relate to, because it affects their everyday lives.” 

On the webinar, the reporters explained that the media does not report on many of the issues that transportation agencies would like them to cover. Readers are drawn to stories with drama, conflict, clear consequences, and practical value. At the local level, they want information that directly relates to their lives such as when a project will be completed, and whether a transportation decision will affect their commute, neighborhood, or tax bill.  

Swan said, “I’ve had some painful conversations with agencies” about that. As tears welled up in her eyes, she explained that publishers are increasingly asking how many people are going to engage with an article. “I can’t afford to do stories,” she said, “that are not going to engage readers.” 

On rare occasions, Swan will write about a consequential topic that she knows only a few people will read. But, fewer of those very important but “boring stories” are getting published. 

Higgs has the same experience. “We have metrics that show people do not read an entire story, all the way to the bottom. They will get through, if you’re lucky, the first three or four paragraphs, and that’s it.” Sometimes, he said, his video staff produces 10-second-long TikTok videos, so “we’re trying to boil it down into that tiny little sound bite to get it out there.” 

According to Higgs, when agency officials come up with story ideas they would like reporters to cover, they need to frame them in terms of the impact on transportation users. The agencies also have to explain issues in accessible language. Sometimes, he says to the engineers, “OK, now tell me what you just told me in English, so I can tell my readers that.” 

Lesson #3: Every national story has a local angle. 

Higgs said, “There is always a New Jersey aspect to a story. That’s one of our mantras in the newsroom. If you dig deep enough, there’s going to be some kind of New Jersey person, or New Jersey aspect, or agency, or what have you, involved in it.” For example, when a bridge in Maryland collapsed, he wrote about whether New Jersey bridges could suffer the same fate. 

He also said there is no shortage of stories. “I never go to work and say, oh my God, what am I going do today? I’m going to be bored to death, drooling on my keyboard.” 

Because Swan’s readers live in the Bay Area, a global center for innovation, she often writes about new transportation technologies. But she tends to focus on the local reactions to the technology, such as whether autonomous taxis are taking parking spaces or causing congestion. 

Lesson #4: Agencies and reporters need each other, but they do not necessarily have the same objectives. 

Higgs said transportation agencies should care about the media “because whether they like it or not, we help get the message out there.” He said readers seek out information from the media when they feel they have not gotten a satisfactory response from an agency. He said the media does public agencies a favor, so that they are not in the situation of people saying, “I never heard of this until now” or “What are you trying to keep from me?” 

When asked about the relationship between transportation agencies and reporters, Swan said, “Just being completely honest, I think we have different objectives, in a lot of cases. There’s one agency I interact with, their objective is very much to protect their people, to protect the government and the officials who are in charge. They don’t want any bad news out there.” She has noticed that transportation agencies have been taking that defensive approach more frequently. 

Swan said, “I have to engage readers as well as convey accurate information and it’s very much a delicate balance … If you’re thinking about our raw objectives, sometimes they align, and sometimes they’re going to clash. I’m not always on your team, maybe I’m looking into something that I think you messed up.” 

She realizes that she can annoy agency officials by asking a lot of questions, but she tells them, “I really want to get this right. I don’t want you to call me angry the next day because there’s a detail that’s wrong.” She added, “I do think it behooves the people who are running that agency to be accessible within reason, to have their message, convey it to the public, and kind of work with the media, because otherwise there’s going to be a lot of misinformation out there.” 

Lesson #5. Even though the media is rapidly changing, relationships and trust still matter most. 

Greene said, “Artificial intelligence is shaping how we communicate, how we share stories, and how we validate the information that we share.” Because AI can create realistic videos, Maryland DOT now needs to verify videos before taking action. She also said that the department makes transcripts of senior leaders’ remarks because their words can now be so easily manipulated.  

Higgs said his news organization has invested in AI, but has very strong policies limiting its use without human oversight. Swan said her newspaper has chosen to embrace AI rather than fight it. While Swan appreciates how AI can help her with grammar and research, she gets really frustrated because after working hard to write an article, it “gets repurposed for free by bots.” 

Even as the media changes, the relationship between reporters and agencies still depends on personal connections. 

Hawkins emphasized that reporters need to foster relationships with agency officials. He said, “It’s just great to have conversations with people that isn’t about a pitch, or isn’t about a specific story that they’re trying to hand over to you, that is just more about what’s going on today? What’s going on in the news? What’s crossed your feed? What do you find that’s interesting and exciting out there?” He said those conversations deepen a relationship so that when agencies do pitch a story, reporters will take a harder look and give it more consideration, because there’s a foundation of understanding and trust. 

Developing those relationships is not always easy, though. Hawkins said that the Trump administration has “their own sort of media policies and media outlets that they would prefer to interact with.” 

Swan explained that it is important for her to have agency contacts she can talk to, whether she can quote them or not. She finds it helpful to run a story idea by a trusted contact, and find out whether it is worth pursuing or whether she is totally off track. 

Greene tells her staff at Maryland DOT to cultivate relationships with reporters: “Don’t just call them when you need something. Give them everything, share information, give them insights. They may use it, they may not, but at least they’re on the inside.”