FENTON FUNDAMENTALS: COMMUNICATIONS NEWS AND TIPS
JUNE 22, 2004

How do you get your story in the news? Often the answer can be right under your nose in the paper you’re reading.

One of the most effective ways to secure media coverage is to insert your angle or announcement into a bigger story already in the news or that you know the media will cover.

In this edition, we will provide some examples of Fenton clients doing that recently. We hope it is useful and can help propel your own news onto the front pages.

In This Edition:

  1. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER IS MOVEON’S TICKET TO DEBATE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

  2. 50th ANNIVERSARY IS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION STORIES

  3. DETROIT PROJECT DRIVES MORE IN-DEPTH STORIES ON GAS PRICES

  4. USEFUL WEBSITES FOR ANTICIPATING NEWS

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1. THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW: A SUMMER BLOCKBUSTER IS MOVEON’S TICKET TO DEBATE ABOUT GLOBAL WARMING

The growing trend of news outlets covering the entertainment industry is more than just discouraging. It is also an incredible opportunity.

A parade of celebrity interviews coupled with multi-million dollar promotions result in inevitable stories about the summer’s blockbuster movies. Media outlets are hungry for any new angles to explore with these shallow stories, especially if they can stir up a little controversy.

That’s just the opportunity MoveOn.org saw with the Memorial Day weekend release of Hollywood’s latest blockbuster. In The Day After Tomorrow, global warming kills millions and threatens mankind with sudden catastrophic weather conditions. While the film may be more science fiction than science fact, the threat of a climate crisis is very real.

MoveOn.org enlisted Fenton’s help to ride the tidal wave of Hollywood promotions to an education campaign about the real dangers of global warming and Bush’s inaction. More than 8,000 MoveOn members signed up to distribute climate crisis information to movie-goers at local theaters.

Media outreach about the campaign began early to give science writers and other journalists the opportunity to discuss global warming and the movie well before reviews hit the stands.

And on the same day as Fox Studio’s premier of the movie in New York City, MoveOn organized a town hall meeting with Al Gore, Robert Kennedy Jr., Al Franken, Laurie David and other leading progressives to talk about Bush’s failure to address our looming climate crisis. Held just a block from the movie premier, 600 people and 80 journalists attended the event.

Media coverage before and during the movie’s huge opening weekend included print outlets like USA Today, the New York Times, Washington Post, AP, Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine and many more. And some of the dozens of broadcast stories included NPR, CNN, NBC’s “The Today Show” and CBS’s “Evening News.”




2. 50th ANNIVERSARY IS GOLDEN OPPORTUNITY FOR EDUCATION STORIES

Whether it’s Elvis’ birthday, September 11 or the death of Princess Diana, the media love to cover anniversaries. You can greatly improve your own chances for coverage if you “hook” your issue on the timing of a relevant anniversary or milestone.

That is just what Fenton and UCLA’s Institute for Democracy, Education and Access (IDEA) did with the 50th anniversary of Brown versus the Board of Education, the landmark Supreme Court decision to desegregate schools.

The William and Flora Hewlett Foundation commissioned a Harris poll of 1,056 California teachers analyzed by IDEA, an expert on California’s K-12 education system.

The survey revealed that conditions for California teachers and students were deplorable, with classrooms often in disrepair and lacking equipment and materials.

But the finding that students of color suffer much worse conditions than their white counterparts became an important tool for garnering coverage before the mass media spotlight on the Brown versus Board of Education anniversary.

And by timing our press events several days before the official May 17 anniversary, we ensured coverage before most stories came out and paved the way for reporters to include our angles in their coverage on the day itself.

We also highlighted parts of the survey that related to another story already in the news: Governor Schwarzenegger’s education reform proposals.

Dovetailing both messages with stories already in the news helped the survey rise above the media noise, securing stand-alone coverage in the Los Angeles Times, the San Francisco Chronicle, the Sacramento Bee and several other state papers, some of whom also editorialized on the findings.

“California Report” and “Which Way L.A.?” were two of the many radio stories, and of the various TV reports, the survey provided Spanish stations like Univision and Telemundo with relevant angles to cover the anniversary from a Latino perspective.



3. DETROIT PROJECT DRIVES MORE IN-DEPTH STORIES ON GAS PRICES

Media coverage of Memorial Day vacationing and skyrocketing gas prices were the perfect timing hooks for the latest campaign from the Detroit Project Action Fund, the group founded by Arianna Huffington, Laurie David, Lawrence Bender, Ari Emanuel and creative director Scott Burns to challenge America to rethink its oil consumption.

As reporters combined stories about record-high prices at the pump with advance stories about Memorial Day traffic, the Detroit Project framed the holiday as the most expensive American driving weekend in recent memory. They released their new television ad that blames gas prices squarely on President Bush and his administration’s sweetheart deals with the oil industry.

The ad and news coverage added a deeper layer of discussion to the gas price story, revealing how refinery companies (ConocoPhilips and ExxonMobile) cozy with the Bush White House have posted some of their highest earnings in years as Americans suffer at the pump. The campaign also put the spotlight on Bush’s failure to encourage fuel efficiency standards for trucks and SUVs from his auto industry buddies.

The added perspectives to a story already in the news helped place the Detroit Project campaign on CNN and in the New York Times, Reuters, the National Journal’s “Ad Spotlight,” among others.




4. USEFUL WEBSITES FOR ANTICIPATING NEWS

Here are some useful websites to help you monitor and evaluate opportunities for inserting your news into current or upcoming media coverage of other stories.

A) News monitoring: sites like http://news.google.com/ allow you to sign up for automatic emails when stories containing your selected keywords appear. And ABC’s The Note is one of many sites that summarize current and upcoming stories (see their “Futures” section), providing a great gauge for what might play well when.

B) Calendar dates: also helpful are sites that categorize various anniversaries, historical milestones and births or deaths. Below are two examples that can be included in your own development of a calendar of dates related to your issue and ripe for pitching media stories.

http://encyclopedia.thefreedictionary.com/List of historical anniversaries/

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_historical_anniversaries

C) Advocacy news: before planning your own news announcements, check out what other public interest or advocacy groups are doing. Here is a popular site for journalists that tracks recent news, reports, etc.

http://govtnews.com/fypi0616.html


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