The media are vital to help you get the word out to your target audience(s) about the role of local public health.  In many cases, they are the single most effective conduit for delivering your messages to the people you want to reach.

Set forth a media strategy before making initial contact with a single editor or reporter. Make sure that you identify your key audiences, define your messages clearly and concisely, engage the appropriate media outlets for reaching your audiences, and provide the sort of background materials that reporters need and expect. Throughout this guide, we offer tips on engaging the media in your community and developing messages; guidelines for writing news releases and op-eds; and advice on partnering with local radio and television outlets and pitching local stories.  

Here are a few things to think about as you get started with your media outreach efforts.

Define Your Audiences – Consider whom you want to reach with your communications. Certain media outlets are better suited for certain audiences. Here are some questions to consider.

Who have been the primary recipients of your past work? Are there other audiences you want to reach?

• Are there specific groups that need to know more about your project than others?
• Are there audiences with natural interests in the messages you are trying to promote?
• What audience will be most receptive to your message?

Define Your Message – Before identifying the media you want to reach, define the most important messages you want them to emphasize. Determining the key messages and overall goals of your project will set a sound framework for everything that follows.

• What do you want reporters (and ultimately members of your community) to know? Do you want to raise awareness, call community members to action, or both? Do you want to bring attention to all facets of your programs and activities, or only specific ones?
• Are you prepared to respond to an increased level of interest and inquiries from the audiences you are trying to reach?  Do you have adequate staffing? If you have a Web site, is the content current and does it correspond with your media outreach activities?
• Use your own experience to create your message. When you talk about public health to family, friends, and colleagues, what part of it excites you and them most? Focus on the most exciting aspects when defining your message; don’t bury your message in details or jargon. There is a world of difference between “For every shot that goes into the arm of a healthy adult, there will be one small child or frail elderly person who won’t be able to get vaccinated” and “Americans should respect the CDC guidelines, and healthy people should not get a flu shot so there is enough for those who need it.”
• Does your message need to be framed in different ways to effectively reach different audiences?  Make sure that you define why specific audiences need to know about your work, and why it is important to them. For example, if your goal is increasing flu surveillance capacity in your community, you may want to emphasize one set of points to convince local officials to allocate funds, but use a different set of points if you are trying to persuade local residents to wash their hands to help prevent the flu.
• Look for natural news hooks – the involvement of a local celebrity or activities timed around a national day or other local community event for the activities you may be undertaking. Take advantage of these news hooks to show media outlets that your work is timely and will attract readers, viewers, or listeners.

Establish Relationships with Community Partners – Are there other organizations in your community that share goals and activities similar to your own? If so, would it be advantageous to partner with them in reaching media? If you do choose to partner with another group, take the following points into consideration.

• Determine responsibilities. Have a clear plan for who will handle each task.
• Share news lists and contacts.
• Draft news releases and other project materials together and include the names (and logos if feasible) of the partners on media materials.
• Identify common audiences and determine who is best suited to reach out to those audiences.
• Prepare your organization’s representatives and your partners to be spokespersons. Do they have experience doing media interviews?  Do you have the right spokespersons—are they appealing to the audiences that you want to reach?

Use Existing Resources for Creating News Materials – As you begin to create your media outreach strategy, consider the media tools already at your fingertips.

• Customize the news release template included in this guide.
• Draw on materials you have already created to generate content for news releases, op-eds, and other media tools.