Media Strategy: Messaging and Framing

Click here to view the list of current trainings offered or to sign up.

If you want to:

• Learn how to use the news media for social justice work.
• Get the media to pay attention to your advocacy campaign.
• Talk deeper about the issues behind the day’s headlines

Topics PPH trainers can cover:

• How to pick a media goal. Make your presswork match your campaign needs.
• Develop a media message for your campaign. Examine intended audience(s), stereotypes to avoid, and the principles of winning media messages.
• How to create a media message with staff and members. Learn methods to bring all the brains of your organization into the media mix and stay on track.
• Hone access skills: build relationships with reporters and develop eye-catching news advisories and releases. Learn how to make yourself attractive to the media without compromising your work.
• Stay on message. Learn how to talk in sound bites without losing the message; control the terms of debate in an interview.
• Become a go-to source in your field. Understand how to provide background while still getting mentioned.
• Use new media to tailor-make a press protocol and media strategy for your organization/campaign.
• Know who you’re dealing with. Understand politics of the media world and the outlets within it. Gauge who is friendly to your cause, who is not, and learn how deal with interviews by both.

Key Features and Benefits:

• Develop a practical understanding and hands-on experience of what makes an effective media message.
• Create sound-bites to use for your own campaign and learn the tools to stay on message.
• Receive handouts you can use in your own organization as you develop a media plan.
• Understand the principles of winning media strategies and how to apply them to your organization and its work.

Depending on the goals of participants, trainings may include

• How to deal with hostile reporters
• The differences in TV, radio and print interviews
• Practice interviews in various formats
• Suggestions for media outlets to contact and intensive story pitching skills
• Using editorial board visits to hold media outlets accountable