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Creating Media Coverage

Silent Treatment: Addiction in America offers a great opportunity for your program and your community partners to generate media coverage. The projects you undertake will have natural news hooks because they directly affect the communities you serve. Additionally, many treatment and recovery-related projects carry human-interest angles that are ready-made for local news placements.  Below are a few tips that can help you generate local media coverage of your project’s activities.

• Know your media. Read, watch or listen to the media outlets you wish to target ahead of time. Note which newspaper reporter or radio or television programs are likely to cover your issue. Make sure your issue or organization fits with the reporter’s “beat,” or area of coverage. If you are not sure of which reporters cover your issue, contact the assignment editor or news director. At large newspapers, there are assignment editors for different sections of the paper (e.g., Health, Metro, Business, etc.). 

• Connect the dots. Help local newspapers carrying the Silent Treatment series to localize their stories. Provide them with background on your organization’s efforts and, if appropriate, make someone within your group, or a member of the community served by your organization, available as an expert on the issues explored in the articles. Remember, media like the local human-interest story.

• Cast a wide net. Reach out to local television and radio reporters to build on the newspaper coverage of the series (see Connecting with Local Radio and TV Outlets). Again, offer to assist broadcast coverage of the issues by providing background information, experts, or community members who illustrate the story topics.

• Stay connected. Arrange general information meetings with reporters that cover beats related to your project’s work. Brief them on upcoming activities, community members participating in the project, and the project goals and timeline. Stay in contact with reporters, updating them on scheduled events and project achievements.

• Add your voice. Near the release date (August 2) of the Silent Treatment series, try to place an op-ed (see Writing an Op-Ed) in your local daily or neighborhood papers or work with radio and TV stations to editorialize on the issue.

• Add the voice of others. If local citizens play a feature role in your campaign, make sure to emphasize their roles to local newspapers and television and radio news programs. Don’t forget school newspapers if your project involves students.

• Think outside your box. Consider using alternative media to access hard-to-reach populations.  Pursue placements in foreign language newspapers and distribute brochures and leaflets in community centers, churches, and hospitals —wherever people with an interest in your story gather.

• Think inside your box. Remember that your organization’s newsletter — and those of other local community organizations — is a media outlet, too. Community organizations, neighborhood associations, and parents’ groups often publish newsletters for their members. Use these outlets to raise awareness of your local efforts.

• Use all your connections. Investigate regional or state e-mail listservs that commonly discuss issues related to your work and include your Web site URL.  Post your Web site, information about the Silent Treatment series, and your project’s achievements and upcoming events to the listservs you identify.

• Use new media.  Consider adding a blog section to your Web site or creating a podcast that can be downloaded from your site by others (see New Media Primer).