The document provides tips for effectively pitching stories to the media and building relationships with reporters. It advises designating media contacts and maintaining media lists. Reporters are busy and stressed, so keep messaging simple and accessible. Visuals, specific details without spin, and helping with research can help reporters understand complex issues. Focusing on real human impacts and packaging stories in engaging formats like top 5 lists increases chances of coverage. Infrastructure issues are difficult to sell but can succeed with a designated media liaison focused on making topics interesting.

1. Making the Media Your Friend

2. Elizabeth Ruebman, Amplify, Inc.
http://www.amplifyinc.org/
• Lobbied Congress on water
issues, including infrastructure.
• Communications for NY/NJ
Baykeeper. Partnered with
Hackensack Riverkeeper to work
on Combine Sewer Overflow
campaigns including a push for
an NJ notification act and a
campaign asking EPA to force NJ
into action.
• Tough to sell to media b/c not a
lot of people swimming in the
urban waters in our watershed.

3. A (Brief) Beginners’ Guide to Media Relations
The first step to getting reporters to care is operationalizing media
relations. Get ready!
• Designate media contact(s) within your organization and establish
protocol.
• Create (and maintain) your media lists
• Use your digital media.
• Learn the basics and respect the deadline.
• Create some basic messaging.

4. Working with Reporters
• Reporters are people, too! (Busy, stressed people.)
• Keep it real. You can be friendly without offering to wash someone’s
car.
• There may be an on-going dialogue before you get a story.
• Reporters have bosses (and readers), too, and this means that
sometime you will need to push back against yours if it’s not really a
good story or the info you are providing is too technical.

5. How to Pitch Your Story
• Make info simple and accessible. Don’t assume any knowledge.
• Visuals. Send a video or pic, create an infographic, stage an event,
give a tour.
• Be ready with good, specific info, without a lot of spin.
• Help with “homework.” Provide links, give a summary of a report,
make it easy. Never make a reporter dig.
• Use real language. For CSOs, we talked about “poop.” Don’t shy away
from grossness or humor, in fact, look for it.

6. How to Pitch, Continued
• Explain what it means in real terms and how it impacts human lives.
“If we don’t replace this sewer main, we will have sewage in the
elementary school.”
• Think about how stories are currently presented and package
accordingly. Top 5 lists are huge and human interest is always more
likely to get ink.
• In short, infrastructure—unless it involves a disaster—is a tough sell
to media but one that’s made much easier if you have a designated
person focused on making it accessible and interesting.
• THANKS FOR LISTENING!
elizabethr@amplify.org