I. Crew Communications
A. Credibility
1. Essential to successful performance
2. Gained by JOs fully integrating into ship’s company; getting watch/warfare
qualified, etc.
B. Bulletin Board
C. Ship’s Newspaper
1. Four printed pages; at least one “local” story per week
2. No printed pages on Sunday
3. Mostly international/national news from teletype; when teletype is taken over by
operations, use short-wave radio to receive and transcribe news broadcasts from
major networks
4. Birth announcements
D. Radio/Television
1. Enlist volunteers where appropriate
2. Produce a live or taped 15-minute nightly news show
3. Sell the CO on a televised Captain’s Call
4. Provide separate channels for movies and AFRTS programming (gives crew a
choice)
11. Family Communications
A. Familygram
1. Make sure it is the responsibility of the public affairs office, not the chaplain’s
office
2. Delegate the writing of each divisional/departmental section (including
photography) to the responsible department head
3. Make sure plenty of fill names are in each input
4. Avoid engagement announcements
5. Use a program that prints next of kin labels for distribution
B. Ombudsman Program
1. Interface before deploying
2. Provide input for the wives support group newsletter and the telephone answering
machine
3. Arrange for ombudsmen to mail news clips from families
III. Media Relations
A. Get ship’s name before the public in as many media as often as possible
B. Use feature materials from ship’s newspaper for release to external media (modify
as necessary)
C. Make one release per week
IV. Tours
A. Get everyone in the public affairs office “qualified” on how to conduct a tour
B. Fine-tune each presentation to the need.sophistication of the tour group; do
not use the same statistics anecdoted for each group
C. Set tour route
Figure 1-17.—Shipboard public affairs office management outline.
1-48
