Washington Monthly’s T.A. Frank has written a provocative commentary on how hard it is to write about “our stuff” in a way that generates readers, interest, and policy progress. He’s writing about one columnist in particular, but the point applies to a broad set of writers – especially DC think tank professionals writing for policymakers and print media. The article’s title is pointed: “Why Is Bob Herbert Boring? The perils of punditry for the powerless”.

Frank makes note of the fact that Herbert is often right – and he’s on our “team”. Yet, being right is clearly not enough. Using Frank’s measures, no one pays much attention to what Herbert writes, even though he is on the New York Times op-ed page and there’s hardly a better platform anywhere. Why not more readers and impact? Frank concludes, in part, that Herbert adds too many stats to his stories about real people. Because Frank notes, it is hard, though not impossible, to interest readers in “the lives of those less fortunate”.

Sadly, history and science make a compelling case that most of us are, indeed, hard-pressed to give a damn.

In the 1960s, the economist Thomas Schelling performed research demonstrating that people are more likely to be moved by single victims than by statistics. In 2005, the psychologists Deborah A. Small, George Loewenstein, and Paul Slovic found the limits of human compassion to be even more irrational and constrained. In their study, students at a university in Pennsylvania were paid five dollars to complete questionnaires on technology. Enclosed with the questionnaire was a seemingly unrelated letter soliciting donations to a hunger relief organization in Africa.

The study's first conclusion was what the researchers had expected: people are more compassionate when they are told about a specific victim. When respondents were asked to donate money to help feed a seven-year-old African girl named Rokia, they contributed more than twice what they did when just confronted with general statistics on hunger.

But then things got surprising. When Rokia was presented with the statistics, the donations fell by nearly half. Worse still, when the authors asked one set of subjects to perform mathematical calculations and the other set of subjects to describe their feelings when they heard the word "baby," the subjects who'd done math gave only about half as much to Rokia as the ones who'd thought about babies. Apparently, just thinking analytically makes us stingier. The authors of the study concluded that "calculative thought lessens the appeal of an identifiable victim."

That's bad news for Herbert, who's fond of specific tales paired with statistics. Penetrating the sympathy barrier of readers is possible, but it generally requires a lot of words and time, and a columnist is restricted to 700 words twice a week. Even worse, op-ed pages are by nature tilted toward argument. Surrounded by analysis, a column that seeks our compassion is already in unfriendly soil.

Frank doesn’t quite make it to my next point – one that complicates Herbert’s (and our) dilemma still further: Sympathy isn’t what policy entrepreneurs should aim for anyway. (For much more on this point – see our recent report by Matt Nisbet and Meg Bostrom’s research.)

So, if you cannot use data easily, and using real people’s stories inelegantly leaves writers stuck in the ineffective sympathy zone – what should we do?

This is the question we try to answer daily at The Mobility Agenda.

Every time we talk to media, write a report, give a speech, talk to an advocate or community organizer or academic (basically whenever we communicate!), we’re thinking about our audience and how to share information in a style that changes the outcome. Because we’re tired of spending time writing stuff that’s published and then ignored.

We know how to write in ways that reach an audience that already agrees with us. Frank gives well-deserved plugs to Jason DeParle and Katherine Boo. Reading these two has always inspired me to write more and try harder. Yet, it’s not clear that even the very best writing about real people moves readers to support progressive policy change – especially when it’s about poverty (or welfare!). It apparently does serve to energize the already persuaded (like me) to do better and more. But, in fact, it’s increasingly apparent that focusing media stories on the poor hasn’t resulted in enough support for the policy we, or Herbert, or presumably Frank, think would work to address poverty.

Part of our answer: talk about ALL OF US, not just some of us. A fundamental problem for so many advocates for the powerless is their focus on the powerless as a distinct, and somehow different demographic.

This approach isn't working. Taking one of Frank’s specific examples - it shouldn’t be that hard to write (or talk) about a federally supported initiative to expand access to health care. It should be obvious to everyone after the recent health care debate: describing programs as “for” the poor leads to arguments about who is poor enough. That’s not the debate we want and it doesn’t lead to the policy result we believe in (affordable, reliable, quality health care for everyone) anyway!

It's definitely time for pundits (and the rest of us) to try something new. Instead of using our precious energy, time, funding, and media real estate to talk to the already persuaded, let's get the persuadable to join us. Now we just have to figure out how to talk their language.