Daviess County Fiscal Court hired Jordan Rowe to serve as its first communications director to oversee and maintain its social media, website and media services for the foreseeable future.
Director of Legislative Services David Smith said it was the first time in Fiscal Court’s history that it conducted a second round of interviews for a position because the top three candidates were so qualified. Between 20 and 30 people applied for the position.
The move to hire a communications coordinator followed a series of events that included the COVID-19 pandemic, the nondiscrimination ordinance vote, and the 2nd Amendment vote — all of which brought heightened media attention and a revolving door of updates and changes that needed to be effectively communicated by Fiscal Court.
“During the pandemic, I think we saw that we were severely lacking in our ability to get our message out,” Smith said. “There were many times we had press conferences here, when we weren’t prepared, equipment-wise. We discussed it during the budget process.”
Rowe previously served as a news reporter in Evansville, as well as a director of strategic communications in Frankfort.
“It would have been nice to have had him here to help all of us commissioners manage the message that was coming out of here because, sometimes, there would be three or four messages coming out,” Judge-Executive Al Mattingly said. “Particularly, it would have been nice to have had him … One of the things folks that I’ve interfaced with since March has been they want to know what’s going on.”
Mattingly said it took someone “dedicated to keeping the stream of information going” to deliver those messages successfully.
Rowe will be working not just for Fiscal Court, but for all the County departments, Mattingly said.
“To get more people to attend functions for the parks department. I’m excited we finally have someone able to manage that message we’ve been trying to get out,” he said.
Smith said Rowe may even serve as communications coordinator for other government departments, including the courts system.
“All of the GRADD judges, and GRADD themselves, are interested in using this communications coordinator because we will be the first county to have one,” Mattingly said. “They know how important it is, and they all run into the same issues. They’re not experts on Facebook. They’re not experts on Twitter. And there is great interest in utilizing him there if we have any spare time.”
