Secrets to Successful Media Work
- Follow-up phone calls are absolutely essential after you send out a press release.
- Think long term and never burn your bridges with editors and producers. You will have to go back to them.
- Develop working relationships with reporters and become identified as sources for good stories.
- Think about news from the perspective of people inside the newsroom.
- Think visually and exploit “photo opportunities” to get your message across.
- Accept that at times you will strike out. It happens to everyone.
- Finally, reporters are people. Thank them for considering your story even when they say no.
Recommended Resource: “Making the News - A Guide for Activists and Nonprofits” is a good beginners guide to media work. Westview Press.
[Peter Wirth of GW Associates]
- Martin Luther King had a favorite saying, “One tiny little minute, just sixty seconds in it. I can’t refuse. I dare not abuse it. It’s up to me to use it.” Today we call it the sound bite.
Read Peter Wirth’s article, Activists and the Mass Media - Dancing with the Devil