First of all, you'll need to know exactly where to send information that you want printed, broadcast, or displayed. Call your local television station or community newspaper, and ask for the public affairs or marketing department. Find out if a specific reporter is assigned to cover your school or youth programs for the community newspaper. Your school's journalism teacher, athletic director, or principal can provide information on helpful media contacts. Parent-teacher association (PTA) officers are also good sources of information. Make sure to introduce yourself to the person in charge of collecting information for the PTA newsletter and find out how and when to submit an item to be printed in the newsletter. Ask the faculty sponsor or student editor of your school paper to include an article on your program in the next issue.

After getting to know media contacts and learning where to send information that you want to publicize, your group should work on clarifying the message that it wants to communicate. Think about the main points of your message. Are you promoting one program or addressing many activities? Are you calling for a specific action? Do you simply want the media to publicize your program or do you want to get the media involved directly as a program participant or an official sponsor?

As your group plans its work with the media, it should follow five critical planning steps:

• Develop a process.

• Reach out to a variety of media organizations.

• Start getting the word out.

• Keep media contacts lined up.

• Develop allies.

Step 1: Develop a Process

Spreading information about your program also requires developing a process for preparing and sending out media communications such as media advisories, press releases, and pitch letters. Follow these steps:

• Design a letterhead that highlights your organization's name, address, and telephone number; copy or print advisories and front pages of press releases onto this letterhead.

• Decide who will be your group's "point of contact" (the person whom reporters or other media representatives should contact) for a particular issue or story. Always provide the name and telephone number of the point of contact so that the media representatives can get answers quickly.

• Write media releases in the "inverted pyramid" style. This means the most important facts (who-what-when-where-how-why) come first. The less important facts come later; and the least important facts come last. Importance is defined by what the media and the public will find important, not by what your group wants highlighted. Study news articles to see what type of information is usually emphasized. By following the "inverted pyramid" style of writing, you'll make sure that your audience or readers get the most important information first. You'll also make sure that readers who stop reading or listeners who tune out early receive the most crucial information. Don't bury the most important information at the end of a story or broadcast!

• Limit press releases to no more than two or three pages.

• Check spelling and grammar. Better still, have someone else proofread for you.

• Double space the press release, and print it on only one side of the paper.

• Fax or mail the release promptly, and make sure you've sent it to the most current media contact. Old news is no news, and news on the wrong person's desk is dead news!

Step 2: Reach Out to a Variety of Media Organizations

Remember: don't limit your media contacts to your community's daily newspapers and major TV and radio stations. Include your school's newspaper and PTA newsletter, your school system's publications, bulletins of religious organizations in your community, weekly newspapers, "magazine" sections of the Sunday newspaper, local calendars of events (often found in newspapers but separate from the daily news), youth center leaflets and message boards, and any other communication outlets in your community. Local talk shows are usually produced separately from the TV or radio news departments, so add them to your list of media contacts. Don't forget about Web sites, cable TV organizations, and supermarket bulletin boards!

Step 3: Start Getting the Word Out

Getting the word out about your program requires concentration, a significant time commitment, persistence, and—most important—a clear and powerful message.

Concentration
To keep your media efforts focused, assign one person or a small group of people to be your group's media representative(s) or spokesperson(s). As they will have the important job of communicating with media representatives on behalf of your group, spokespersons or media representatives must be responsible, well spoken, and easy to get along with.

Time Commitment Form a media committee for your group and assign activities to all committee members so that no single person has too much to do. Even with a committee, however, writing up the following types of media releases is time consuming:

• Media advisories (notices of upcoming events that highlight why media should be interested).

• Press releases (stories that tell the "who, what, when, where, how, and why" of an event or activity that has taken place and provide interesting quotes or illustrations).

• Pitch letters (brief letters to media contacts that propose ideas for a story, especially one that is more in depth than a regular news item).

Time is also needed to fax or mail these items to the media; to determine your message; to select spokespeople; to collect photos, summaries, and fact sheets; to make followup telephone calls; to discuss story ideas with reporters, editors, producers, administrators, or advertisers; and to record all media coverage your program receives. Make sure your volunteers understand how much time and hard work it takes to secure great media coverage!

Persistence
Getting the media to cover your program also requires persistence. Explain to your volunteers the importance of introducing themselves to media representatives, following up on all telephone calls or requests from the media, and keeping media representatives informed of your activities—even if they seem to have forgotten about you! Only through group members' persistent efforts will your program receive the attention it deserves.

Powerful Message
Before dedicating a significant amount of your group's time and effort, make sure that the message you want to deliver is powerful and focused. The more detail that you can provide about your group's activities and goals, the better. The media, for example, will be much more interested in broadcasting information on a peer mediation group's efforts to reduce fighting in its high school if the group has a clear mission, specific activities, and success stories to report.

Step 4: Keep Media Contacts Lined Up

One of the most important elements of a strong working relationship with the media is an up-to-date media contact file. This can be a database on a computer, a paper list, or a set of index cards that allows your group to keep and update records. Whatever its form, the contact file should list media contacts for various subjects along with each contact's organization name, street address, telephone and fax numbers, and e-mail address.

Also keep a record of each media report on your program made by TV and radio stations, newspapers, newsletters, magazines, cable TV providers, and advertising firms. Organize your files. Collect information on how many people heard and/or saw each report. For example, keep track of how many phone calls your organization receives in response to an article or published report. You could develop a log or tracking sheet to be completed by all persons taking calls and tally them up periodically. Also keep a list of all calls your program received as a result of each news article, broadcast, advertisement, or other media communication. Survey people who heard your broadcasts or read articles about your program to determine what they learned from those media reports.

Reviewing records on a regular basis will provide clues about how your group can work more effectively with the media. The best way to track your results is with a clipping book or scrapbook. Log every one of your group's media reports—printed stories, broadcasts, advertisements, and publications—in this book. You may want to develop an intake sheet for doing so. This sheet should have space for you to enter the report's date, source (name of news-paper, newsletter, radio or TV station, or other media agency that ran the report), audience size, and response(s). If it was a printed communication, include a copy of the article or release as well. Remember to keep copies of all printed and media information—including negative articles—about your organization or event. This will help you focus on public perceptions, even if they are negative.

Professional "clipping services" can track and provide copies of all communications about your program that appear in the media. Youth can find out about clipping services available in their communities by checking with their schools, public libraries, or local newspapers. Although helpful, these services are expensive and probably will not be cost effective or necessary to keep track of the mostly local media coverage that your group will get. Instead, form a "media coverage" committee or subcommittee to be responsible for taping TV and radio segments, clipping articles about your program that appear in school, local, or national newspapers or in any other printed media (such as PTA or neighborhood newsletters), and describing any other media coverage that your program receives (on grocery store bulletin boards or local billboards, for example). A committee could also be formed to search national newspapers every so often for information about your group's community, town, school, or State.

Step 5: Develop Allies

In addition to relaying information about your program, the media may actively participate in or become strong advocates for your program. To gain the participation and support of media organizations in your community, your group needs to convince senior media personnel that your program does the following:

• Deals with a problem of concern to a large segment of the community.

• Is effective.

• Could be even more effective with greater media exposure.

• Has an interesting story to tell.

• Offers visual or print images that will attract readers.

• Will create a favorable public image for the station, newspaper, or company, if it chooses to cover, support, or participate in the program.

Developing allies in the media is a long-term process that requires personal commitment and continuous action and contact.

Youth in Action Bulletin

March 2000     Number 14