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Creating Grassroots Movements for Change: A Field Manual

Chapter 6: Attracting Media Attention

Capturing the attention of local, national, and international media will spread the news of your cause and activities far and wide. Whether a reporter prints a notice about your upcoming rally in a small-town paper or a major television outlet runs a primetime special about your movement, the press you receive can generate interest, increase your membership, and create untold opportunities.

Warning: If there is limited freedom of the press where you live or where your cause is focused, attempting to disseminate information could put you or others in danger. Proceed with caution.

To get press coverage, you will need:

• A strong cause
• A computer with internet access
• Media email addresses
• Communication skills
• Events
• Sharp timing
• Determination and patience

Take the following steps to ensure the media hears about—and is sympathetic to—your cause:

Step 1. Be relevant and timely. The media wants to cover topics that are of interest to as many of their readers or viewers as possible, so the more socially relevant, and of the moment, your movement is, the more likely they will be interested. Further, the press must feel confident that your goals are noble and free from hidden agendas—in other words, that your movement deserves press to promote your cause, not you personally or anyone else.

Step 2. Develop contacts. Collect the email addresses of as many individual members of the media as you can off the internet and send each of them a personalized message. Seek out outlets and individuals who have an interest in your cause or have reported on similar issues before.

Tip 1: Email addresses tend to be consistent within an organization: a first initial followed by the last name, for example, such as jsmith@localnews.com. If you have the address of one person, use it to deduce the addresses of other people at the same outlet.

Step 3. Develop relationships. Try to develop personal relationships with as many people in the media as you can; if a contact replies to you, take the opportunity to politely begin a conversation. Being on the media’s radar might not generate press now, but chances are that it will, eventually.

Step 4. Call on others. Ask or appoint group members to contact the local press in multiple cities, and call upon anyone sympathetic to your cause who has a prior relationship with the press to make contacts on your behalf. There may even be group members who are journalists themselves.

Tip 2: If you have members who live abroad, or if you’ve made contact with foreign ambassadors or any visiting dignitaries, ask them to contact media outlets where they live. This can help garner the attention of the international media, especially if the media is restricted in your country.

Step 5: Be strategic. Determine the best audiences to target, and the media outlets that reach those audiences. Personalize your communication with each outlet to position your message and relate your story in a way that will convince them that their readers or viewers should know about your cause.

Tip 3: If you have a leadership structure within your group or members who are willing and able to take on responsibility, divide the duties of press communication among a few people, with one person in charge of keeping the information and message uniform. This will help your movement develop contacts more effectively and ensure your group will always deliver news as it happens.

Step 6: Communicate effectively. Ensure your group's reliability and legitimacy by providing the press with information that is accurate, spelled correctly, and grammatically correct, both in correspondence and in any literature your group creates, whether online or off. Keep your message simple, consistent, and to the point.

Step 7: Use press releases. Write a press release when you need to disseminate critical information quickly, like to alert the media to an upcoming event or a recent success. Keep it as short as possible to increase the likelihood that it will be read and understood, email your contacts with a brief summary to alert them prior to its release, and post it on any of the numerous free newswire organizations. If it will not put you at risk, include your contact information on every communique you issue.

Tip 4: Create a media kit that contains images of your events to send to outlets that didn’t attend, and post them online so they’re always available for reproduction.

Step 8. Be compelling. Allow the passion that drew you to this cause to inform your communication with the media. Journalists are interested in compelling and engaging stories, whether it’s a clearly articulated injustice or the experiences that led to your group's founding. Convince them that they should care on a personal level—in the same way that you call the community and group to action—and you’ll create powerful champions for your cause.

Step 9. Be a watchdog. Make the most of real-time i-reporting via Twitter and other social media. Post a photo or video from your cell phone; update your social network and Twitter status. When news breaks, updates from on-the-scene citizen reporters can provide valuable information to others in the area, and can document for the outside world a more complete, nuanced picture of what's really happening on the ground.

Step 10. Communicate in multiple languages. If your native tongue is one that most foreign media won't understand, your cause will need updates that target a global audience. Also consider translating and retweeting as many trustworthy reports as you can to provide easy, immediate access to more voices than just your own. It takes many streams to form a mighty river.

Step 11. Have events. The media is far more likely to cover an event or activity than an idea or discussion, no matter how important or spirited. Give them a reason to cover your movement by hosting a rally, march, sit-in, fundraiser, or some other kind of awareness-raising event. Make it appealingly innovative, keep it well organized and publicized, and give the media plenty of advance notice.

Step 12. Host press conferences. When you have an announcement that you want to receive broad and immediate attention, announce a press conference and invite all your contacts in the media. Tell them the topic that will be discussed, like the details of a major initiative, and what other outlets may be coming. You want the media to feel confident that your press conference will be worth their time to attend..

Tip 5: Choose the location of your press conference wisely, like a place that has historical significance to your cause: even better if it provides a great visual backdrop for photographs and television footage.

Step 13. Follow up. Stay in touch with your contacts in the media, and follow up, particularly when there’s some new angle or information to give them. If you’ve had a successful event or enjoyed press from another outlet, seize this momentum and make your case again that you are more socially relevant and deserving of attention than ever. And when you do receive press, let the reporter know you appreciate it.

Step 14. Take advantage of controversy. Now and then, your movement may generate controversy or dissent. Perhaps you’ll receive bad press, or maybe detractors will spread rumors about your leadership. Whatever the case, use the negative attention to your advantage by publicly responding. Stay on message, avoid sounding defensive, and remain true to your ideals.

Tip 6: Consider using humor or taking a creative approach to capitalize on attention, like posting a satirical response to a negative article.

Step 15. Be popular.Be popular. The best way to get the press’s attention is to enjoy popular support. Grow your online social-networking group, host an event that will attract large numbers of participants, and make a video that dramatizes the power of your message. Post the video on social-networking sites, your site's homepage, YouTube, related message boards, and sympathetic blogs, and blast it to your members and ask them to pass it on. The press will hear about you and will contact you directly. And the more coverage you receive, the more coverage you’ll generate. As more and more journalists hear, read, or see press about your movement, they’ll want to talk about, write about, or broadcast your story, too.

Did you know: When Save Darfur Coalition rallies in New York City and Washington D.C. gathered tens of thousands of people in 2006, the group scored a photo on the front page of The New York Times. Visit Save Darfur Coalition at http://www.savedarfur.org/

Case Study: Five days after starting a Facebook group, One Million Voices Against the FARC was the most popular network in Colombia. The movement created a press release and collected a database of over 100 journalists to alert them to this phenomenon. The local newspaper El Tiempo devoted an editorial to the movement, which was picked up by the newswires Agence France-Presse and Reuters, beginning an international groundswell of press that quickly included CNN, Radio France Internationale, Univision, Italy’s RAI, Brazil’s Globo, El País of Spain, La Nación of Argentina, El Heraldo de Mexico, The Miami Herald, The New York Times, and The Economist. Visit One Million Voices Against the FARC at http://www.millonesdevoces.org/

Case study: Worried that the average press release seemed more self-promotional than cause-promotional, the Lebanese group Youth for Tolerance generated their own media, filming and editing advertisements against war and blind allegiances. With limited means and no outside assistance, they created simple but high-quality 30-second infomercials that several local TV stations agreed to run for free. Visit Youth for Tolerance at http://youthfortolerance.org/

To edit this chapter, visit the Howcast wiki guide at http://www.howcast.com/guides/2453-How-To-Create-Grassroots-Movements-For-Change-6-Attracting-Media-Attention

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