e.politics: online advocacy tools & tactics

Online Tactics: Working with the Media

July 3rd, 2006

The first thing to remember about working with the news media is that reporters are bombarded with information and that the good ones consequently quickly develop a sensitive bullshit meter. When you’re working with journalists, dial back the rhetoric and focus on the facts of your issue.

The main exception is when you’re providing a statement to a reporter from which he or she will mine quotes. In that case, being over-the-top may help land you in the story. But even then, always try to back your language up with facts, usually in a “For More Information” section at the end of the statement. Everything you send to reporters should have your site’s URL!

As when you’re dealing with Congressional staff and other decision-makers, often your most-important role is to have a website that’s a good information resource. Reporters are going to start out on Google, like the rest of us, so having relevant content that’s widely linked-to is vital. Content, once again, is key.

Next, when reporters do arrive at your site, make sure that they can find what they’re looking for. General navigability is a good start, but you’ll also usually want to have a special section of the site carved out for journalists. In that section, you’ll generally have:

• press releases and statements, often divided by topic
• information about your issues, or at least clear links to your issues, factsheets and reports
• contact information for your organization’s press team
• a sign-up form for your press email list

Now that we’ve taken care of random stumblers-by, let’s get more aggressive. When you’re contacting reporters, you generally don’t want to send email attachments — they may be away from the office and reading mail over a Treo or Blackberry or even a dial-up connection in a hotel room, and big attachments will bug the hell out of them.

Consequently, one of your common tasks is usually going to be supporting your press team by collecting documents that they want reporters to see and presenting them on a central page about an issue. You’ll usually have a short intro and a clearly-identified list of links of the documents (which might include press releases, video clips, congressional testimony, letters to Congress from supportive corporate CEOs or grassroots citizens groups, reports, factsheets, etc). Here’s a good example of such a page on the NET site, in this case intended both for reporters and for Hill staff.

When you’re preparing issue pages like this one, unless you’re specifically keeping them low-profile, make sure that they’re referenced on your site front page. A reporter may remember that he or she got information from you recently but not have access to the specific URL of your news release or your issue page.

One other tactic we’ve had great success with at NET is podcasting issue briefings. When we hold a conference call or even a stand-up press event, if possible we’ll record the audio and post it online as an mp3. This way, reporters who couldn’t make the initial event can still listen in, and we’ve gotten several press hits from podcasts that we’d have missed if the audio hadn’t been available. And, of course, regular citizens can listen in, too, which has led to blog hits in the past.

Long-term reporter education

Beyond supporting normal press outreach, you can also create special sites or special online presentations for long-term press education. They may be straightforward presentations of information or they may be snazzy video extravaganzas, but their goal is usually to influence the way reporters approach an issue rather than to score immediate press hits.

Before I started at NET, they launched Luntzspeak.com, an excellent little site centered around a strategy memo by Republican pollster/messaging guy Frank Luntz. In the memo, Luntz suggested language that Republicans could use to improve their image on environmental issues without changing their actual policies, and the Luntzspeak site highlighted politicians’ use of his tactics for reporters. The goal: to make them skeptical of such language in the future.

Another good educational tool is to present abstract data in a way that’s easy to grasp. As an example, again, before I started as an employee, NET’s partner Clear The Air developed an online power plant pollution locator as a Flash application. The locator site shows major power plants across the country and lets you zoom in on each one to see how many tons of pollutants it produces. It also compares the effects of different plant clean-up plans. Besides putting it on the web, Clear The Air also providing its field organizers with CD copies that they could bring directly to reporters and demonstrate.

See also:

• Tossing Emails into the Spin Blender
• Media Relations Tips
• Effective Press Releases in a Search-Driven World

Next: Viral Campaigns

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Entry Filed under: Websites, Marketing/Promotion, Media Relations

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