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Recruit Your Newspaper

The key to expanding the reach and impact of Silent Treatment is to encourage your local and regional newspapers to run the series. The series also provides an opportunity for your organization to receive local and regional news coverage for its programs and initiatives.  Editors and reporters need compelling, timely and local content as much as you need coverage of your issues. Newspapers are more inclined to run a series when their local communities have a keen interest in the topic. Your organization and its representatives can bring credible, first-hand knowledge of treatment and recovery issues, and their local relevance, to editors and reporters in a persuasive way. 

Begin now by talking with other organizations in your community and encourage them to partner with you in activities that promote recovery and address treatment needs in your community.  The series serves as the foundation for your action plan, offering both a national perspective and impetus for local action and solutions. 

Suggested Action Steps:

Meet with editors and reporters from your local newspaper. There are many opportunities for community involvement around this series; in fact, the newspaper publishers are counting on it.  The first step is to visit with your local newspaper editors and make certain that they are aware of the series. Keep in mind that newspapers are more inclined to run a series when their local communities ask for it.  Look around your community for logical partners that might join you in promoting the series.  Arrange a meeting with the managing editor, news editor or feature/health section editor of your local newspaper.  A small, diverse delegation of two or three articulate people tends to be more persuasive than an individual, so, whenever possible, include representatives from partner organizations.  Come prepared with ideas and suggestions that focus on local issues. 

Keep your message simple and concise. Try to keep your introduction to three or four sentences that will tell the editor why he or she should be interested in publishing the series. Give more details as the conversation continues, but think of your opening as a way to heighten interest.  After you’ve made your initial introduction, be prepared to answer more specific questions. Know why the series would be of particular interest to the newspaper’s readers, and identify the local angle. Have a list of community groups that can provide background and interviews for reporters to use to localize the series. The more resources you can offer, the better your chances of success.

Suggest local stories.  Be prepared with ideas and suggestions that focus on local issues (see Pitching Local Stories), including local statistics on substance abuse and treatment access.  Use the series to establish or strengthen relationships with newspaper editors and reporters about important local initiatives currently underway.  These connections will have residual benefits for you and your program.  Silent Treatment will touch on a broad range of topics (see Series Summary) – each of them meaningful and powerful. Remember, what affects readers the most, what stays with them the longest, is an issue that personally touches them or the people they know. Through that personal connection, the story is brought home – and that is value that you can add to the Silent Treatment articles. 

Develop directories of local resources.  The series represents an opportunity for the many diverse local organizations focused on encouraging access to treatment and celebrating recovery to come together.  Look around your community for logical allies.  For example, put together a list of treatment providers and recovery groups in your community, with basic information on each.  Or compile a list of self-help meetings and a description of the recovery aspect they support.

Key points to emphasize.  Many newspapers across the country will be interested in running this groundbreaking series, especially since it will be offered free of charge.  The Silent Treatment articles will be distributed by Knight Ridder/Tribune Information Services to any newspaper through KRT’s dedicated Web site; no Knight Ridder or Tribune Company affiliation is necessary.  KRT is aware of the great need for information on these issues and knows both small and large papers have a tremendous reach within their communities. KRT concluded that cost could be an obstacle to papers’ ability to run the series; editors should be made aware that this content, researched and written by professional journalists, is free. The series is also available in “paginated” format — that is, as a pre-published section — ideal for use in a weekly health section. Photographs and related graphics will be supplied along with the articles. Let the editor know that a Spanish version of the entire series will be distributed as well. You can provide the following instructions to newspaper editors.