What’s Wrong with this Email from City Council Speaker Christine Quinn?

About twice a day a perfect argument for why even competent writers need editors lands in my Inbox. Below is the latest, and it typifies one of the primary ways organizations misuse email, churning out external communications that are not only too long but also, ultimately, ineffectual.

Judicious editing could have helped here. Imagine reading only the sections in bold:

June 2, 2010

Dear Ms. Hustad,

Thank you for sharing your concerns about the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts to the City’s libraries.

The New York City Council has been a major supporter of the City’s libraries over the years, and I appreciate you letting us know how important your local branch is to you and your community. In these tough economic times especially, more and more New Yorkers are turning to libraries, not just for books and other media, but also for the many free programs and services they provide.

While our commitment to the City’s libraries remains as strong as ever, the State is struggling to close a massive multi-billion dollar deficit, and we won’t know the full impact of this on our City until Albany passes its budget. One thing is for certain, though: The Governor’s proposed cut of $1.3 billion in state funding to New York City would be a devastating blow to our communities.

On Friday, June 4th at 11 a.m. in the Council Chambers at City Hall, our Committee on Cultural Affairs, Libraries and International Intergroup Relations, together with our Finance Committee and our Select Committee on Libraries, [we] will be holding a public hearing on the Mayor’s proposed budget cuts to the City’s libraries.

While funding for core services like education and public safety must continue to be our top budget priority, we will certainly do our best to restore as much funding as we can to the City’s libraries. The Council proposed a number of alternative cuts last year that the Mayor ultimately adopted, and we will continue to look for other possible alternatives this year.

Your support and involvement during this process are very important to us, and I will be sure to keep you updated on our progress moving forward. Thanks again.

Sincerely,

Christine C. Quinn

Speaker

The main problem here is offering content that feeds the egos of the people crafting it but really doesn’t accomplish much else beyond that. Ms. Quinn — or, more likely, the staffer that wrote this for her — is providing too much detail, much of which speaks to the difficulty of her job, more of which simply restates the problem (and is thus busy work — obviously someone writing to her with concerns about the proposed City budget cuts and how they might affect library services is aware of the proposed City budget cuts and how they might affect library services).

This is harmless puffed-up writing in and of itself. And yet it effectively buries the one critical and useful piece of information in this email: the 11 a.m. Friday meeting.

Anyhow, this type of thing always happens when too many in-house egos are involved in drafting out-of-house communications. 30% of the space is lost to weird co-dependencies and formulaic expressions of concern that wind up sounding oddly tinny and insincere.