Dollars and Sense

Congressional leadership have taken a first step toward averting a partial government shutdown next week, but several issues remain. 

Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) and House Speaker Mike Johnson (R-LA) on Sunday released a topline funding proposal of $1.659 trillion for FY 2024. 

The bipartisan agreement includes $886 billion for defense and $773 billion for non-defense discretionary spending - the same levels as agreed to by President Biden and then Speaker McCarthy during the debt limit negotiations last year. The proposal contains several concessions by Democrats, accelerating $10 billion in cuts to the Internal Revenue Service that Biden and McCarthy had agreed to and including $6 billion in recessions of unspent COVID-19 pandemic funds. Not surprisingly, members of conservative Freedom Caucus have already expressed opposition, saying it doesn’t reduce funding for non-defense programs. 

President Biden is recognizing the compromise and urging congressional Republicans to “do their job, stop threatening to shut down the government, and fulfill their basic responsibility” to approve federal spending for key domestic and security priorities. 

Although this agreement represents progress, it does not completely eliminate the possibility of at least a partial shutdown as soon as January 19th. Congressional leadership and appropriators still face a large number of decisions and tasks, including reaching an agreement on subcommittee funding levels, actual bill text and controversial policy riders included in House Republican bills.

To kick off 2024, our friends at the FGS Health Media Insights newsletter compiled some resolutions for engaging reporters this year, with a little help from the Cision State of the Media Report – see below for their do’s and don’ts:

• Do lead with data. Reporters are relying on data more than ever. We know this to be true in health care especially, where data is key to telling complicated stories. When possible, pitch new, unique data that’s easy for reporters to plug in to stories about broader trends.

• Don’t overcomplicate. Health care is endlessly complex and nuanced, but your pitches shouldn’t be. Make your intentions clear in the subject line, define what the news is in the first paragraph and include all the key info in the body of your email.

• Do prioritize face-to-face interaction. No form of communication is as productive as an in-person meeting, whether it be over coffee or at an industry conference. Making the effort to meet the journalists that your organization follows can go a long way toward building a positive relationship.

• Don’t pester. Overdoing it on follow-up pitching can seriously damage relationships with reporters, with many going as far as to block communications professionals who overwhelm them with emails. One follow-up to a pitch is fine, but leave it at that.

Remember that the strongest reporter relationships are mutually beneficial. The best way to build trust is to provide pertinent information that is relevant to their beat and keeps them up to date on the most important news from your organization and industry. 

Bonus Reading: Fierce Healthcare’s Anastassia Gliadkovskaya posted her own take on pitching etiquette that’s worth considering.

​
​Google has released Gemini – a new "multimodal" AI model that learns from text, audio, video and images rather than just text like ChatGPT. This suggests AI progress will accelerate thanks to new techniques combining large language models with other AI approaches. 

Moving beyond the limitations of today's models would enable AI systems to better understand the real world, with big implications for digital products. It signals that despite ChatGPT's viral success, development is already moving on beyond the current paradigm, with both Google and OpenAI looking at bolder ideas to make further progress in AI capabilities. OpenAI in particular will feel emboldened after Sam Altman’s dramatic return at the end of November.

2024 is set to be an exciting year for AI – for learnings around navigating change, see FGS’s Digital Insights team’s recent piece on managing reputation in the age of AI. 

Curious to learn more? Subscribe to FGS Global’s Digital Insights newsletter to stay ahead in the ever-evolving digital world.