Taking CCHD's Good News to the Media
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The Catholic and secular media can help CCHD achieve key communications objectives: to remind Catholics that poverty still exists in the United States, to educate them about its nature in the 21st century, and to explain how their contributions to the annual collection benefit the poor.
CCHD's national materials provide you with basic media tools to help promote the Catholic Campaign for Human Development. The press release included in your materials can be localized for every diocese, and you can use CCHD information from print materials and the web site (www.usccb.org/cchd) to prepare other materials you may need. If you meet with reporters, make sure to give each reporter a business card that clearly identifies CCHD; if you "wear more than one professional hat," write CCHD's name on your card so the reporter knows which organization you are representing.
Your diocesan communications office can be a helpful resource. Develop this relationship!
- Create a "database" of Catholic and secular media in your area on database software, word processing software, or on 3x5" cards. Include the name of the news organization, address, the names of reporters or editors who are interested in social justice and/or religion issues, and the specific phone, fax and email for each reporter. The better you know the publication and its reporters, the better you will know which reporter to approach with your release or story idea.
- Include reporters who cover issues like agriculture or health care which match the concerns identified by the CCHD-funded projects in your diocese.
- Include daily and weekly publications, local magazines, and business publications. The breadth of funded projects offers a variety of story ideas to present to the media, and many of them will have economic angles because of the community nature of the projects.
- When your release is ready, fax or email it to the reporter you have targeted. For radio and TV stations, send the release ahead of time to the attention of the "Futures Editor," who is responsible for planning news coverage. (In some stations, the "Assignment Editor" plays this role, so ask the receptionist at each station to direct you to the right person.)
- Follow up with a SHORT phone call (or a SHORT voice mail message) to provide additional information that the release didn't include and tell the reporter why you think his or her audience will be interested in the story. (Ask your committee to help
brainstorm these "why are they interested" tidbits for each reporter.)
- Offer to help the reporter personalize the story by identifying people involved in the CCHD project who are willing to be interviewed. (Make sure the person you've identified is willing to speak, knows what will be expected of them, and is willing to be photographed.)
Consider recruiting CCHD local committee members who have expertise in public relations and media work. You may want to form a subcommittee on promotions/communications that can work more specifically on promotion of the annual collection and CCHD in the diocese. Volunteers can bring significant additional media contacts and helping hands to your communications efforts.