GW Associates Public Media

Affecting Public Opinion - Are You Making It A Priority?

The work of most organizations involves affecting public opinion and public policy. We demonstrate, vigil, leaflet, do civil disobedience, bring in speakers all to draw attention to the issues we are involved with.

The following lists are items that indicate whether your focus is the community at large or the individuals who come to your presentations or see your events. My observation based on years of contact with organizations across the United States involved with a variety of issues is that we often focus on personal action with little attention paid to reaching out to the entire community.

Things to do to promote affecting public opinion in your community.

• Mention your media successes in your newsletters.Write how-to-do-it articles; Eg. How to write a press release, for your newsletter.
• Clip newspaper coverage you receive. Paste them up at your annual meetings to show your members your success. This also helps to reinforce that the mass media is accessible.
• If you belong to a national organization suggest they have media training workshops at their national gatherings.
• Develop a media strategy as part of every activity that has an outreach focus.
• Purchase media training materials. A delegate who recently traveled to the Middle East and used my Living Media tape arranged a two page article in his home town newspaper with a circulation of over a million. There are many inexpensive resources available.
• If you are planning a delegation include the cost of media training resource in the delegation fee.
• Design an evaluation form (one page - simple) that keeps track of all news coverage for your events. Discuss results at the end of each event.
• See the "community" you're trying to reach as the entire city-county population and not just your members and develop plans to reach that audience.

Signs that out reach to the community is not a priority.

• You don't have a working relationship with any reporters in town.You haven't written a press release for your last few activities.
• You don't follow up your press releases with a phone call.
• No one from your organization has been on any radio or TV talk shows in the last six months.
• There is little discussion of press coverage at your meetings.
• You design a leaflet for outreach without thinking how to take the same material and turn it into an op-ed or letter to the editor.
• You organize a delegation without including media training materials as part of the package.

A friend of mine, a fellow activist said, "Those of us in the 'Angel Squad' forget that we have to sell our ideas just like anyone else." Good luck in your work.

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