Building Relationships with Traditional Media

It’s hard to beat newspapers, radio and television for giving your mission legitimacy and gaining new supporters.

When Julie Borgmann, education and development director for the Red-tail Land Conservancy in east-central Indiana, started writing a column for her local newspaper, friends told her not to bother. “They told me that newspapers were dying and this was a waste of my time,” she says.

Borgmann didn’t listen. “Right now everything is focused on the newest, latest and greatest: social media. People tend to forget about the older audience, including our donors. They’re reading newspapers.”

Traditional media, which includes newspapers, television and radio, has navigated some choppy waters lately. Advertising sales are down, staff sizes have shrunk and social media is filled with criticism of traditional media. But despite these setbacks, traditional media has much to offer land trusts, including validation for your mission, an ability to reach new audiences and a chance to give certain donors information through their preferred method.

Respect Relationship Rules

Working with traditional media means building relationships with publications, stations, editors and reporters. Sometimes a good relationship with the traditional media means providing not only information, but content, such as an article or photographs (rsee more in our blog post "Top Tips from a Reporter").

Joshua Lynsen, media relations manager for the Land Trust Alliance says that creating a relationship with your local media can seem daunting, but every land trust has the tools to do it. The trick, he says, is to use the same techniques you used to build the relationships you already have.

“Treat reporters like donors,” Lynsen says. “Ask for support carefully, respectfully and at the right time.” “Carefully” means that, just as you wouldn’t go to a donor for every little thing, you don’t approach a reporter with everything your land trust does. “Respectfully” means that you should be respectful of the reporter’s time, and accepting when you hear “no.”

Asking for support at the right time not only means asking after you’ve developed a relationship, Lynsen says, it also means under-standing the reporter’s lead time to get stories into print or on the air. And it means doing things on the reporter’s schedule, which may mean staying late or coming in on a day off.

“Whenever the reporter comes to you, that’s the moment of opportunity,” he says. “You can’t push that off.”

For land trust staffers who attend Land Trust Alliance Advocacy Days on Capitol Hill, the idea of treating reporters like senators makes sense. When talking to a senator or other elected official, you want to make sure you have your facts correct and be able to express them briefly. The same goes for reporters.

Finally, Lynsen says, “Here’s one that always gets a chuckle. Treat reporters like your spouse: Go on a walk together, help them and accept that you don’t control them.” All relationships take time, and all involve some give and take.

Walk the Walk

Taking a walk is exactly what Mike Kahn, a communications consultant for the Los Altos, California-based Sempervirens Fund, did when a new reporter was assigned to the environment beat at his local paper, the Santa Cruz Sentinel.

The accredited land trust, which protects redwood forests, was creating its first timber harvest plan. It was a sensitive topic, and the trust wanted to educate the community about it. Kahn’s goal was not only to introduce himself and Sempervirens Fund, but to become a resource to the reporter. He provided a short course in how land trusts work.

The outing was a success. Sempervirens Fund positioned itself as an expert source for the reporter, who continued to quote staffers as experts throughout her time at the paper, even on other organizations’ projects.

An organizational culture that provides the time and the personnel to cultivate relationships with the media is vital, says Meg Hamill, field programs manager with LandPaths in Sonoma County, California. A third of the residents in Sonoma County are Latino, and getting the message out to this community is a natural result of the organization’s structure and staffing, Hamill says.

LandPaths has several staff members who are bicultural — equally at home in both the Spanish- and English-speaking communities in Sonoma. With this familiarity came connections to the Spanish-language media. One of the many qualities that LandPaths’ outreach and diversity director, Omar Gallardo, brought to his job, Hamill says, was long-standing and personal relationships with members of the local Spanish-language media.

Because small newspapers are often strapped for resources, sometimes the give-and-take of a good media relationship means that you give professional-level content and take away the public relations benefit. When it seemed that a shrinking local newspaper only had time to cover the community’s bad news, Red-tail Conservancy’s Borgmann offered a solution.

She met with the planning editor and proposed that, just as the local hospital contributed a health column and the local gardening club wrote a gardening column, the Red-tail Conservancy’s mission of preserving, protecting, restoring and making people aware of the region’s natural heritage could provide topics for a column every other week. “And, of course, it was free content for the newspaper,” Borgmann says.

One week Borgmann focuses on natural history topics, such as a column on wildflowers that ties in to the conservancy’s upcoming wildflower hike. In the next column Borgmann will focus on the role of nature in health and wellness, a personal interest of hers.

North Carolina’s accredited Carolina Mountain Land Conservancy (CMLC) also has a column in its local newspaper. Katie Onheiber, communications and marketing manager, always knows what her topic will be: people. Six years ago the conservancy promised the newspaper high-quality human interest stories, and they’ve continued to deliver.

Each month “Stories of the Land” provides inspiring features about family histories and traditions, local cultural heritage and connecting youth with nature, as well as striking photography. Land conservation supports it all but is never the sole focus of the column.

“Particularly in a community that skews a bit older and more conservative, and where folks still read the print editions routinely, we thought that making it more about people and not necessarily the intricacies of land protection would resonate well with readers,” says Onheiber. “Tying the meaning of land and heritage to the concept of conservation proved to be particularly effective in this community.”

She says that having CMLC’s message appear in newspapers is one of the organization’s greatest opportunities because it reaches people who are not already supporters. And the newspaper has shown its approval by giving the column prime space: the top of the front page of its Sunday living section on the last Sunday of each month.

While heritage and legacy are strong draws for older audiences, the accredited Chelan-Douglas Land Trust in Wenatchee, Washington, found success with a monthly column on kids and nature, which ties in perfectly with one of its flagship programs that gets kids of all backgrounds and their parents to explore the natural world on lands protected by the land trust and its partners.

For all of these land trusts, having a tagline that runs at the end of the article is important because it names the land trust and directs readers to more information on its website.

Talking on All-Talk

Traditional media also includes radio and television. These can be more difficult to get coverage in, says Lynsen, because although a newspaper has many pages to fill daily, the limited minutes of local television news broadcasts can’t cover as many stories or go into as much depth.

Radio is similar to television, but how much local content a station needs to create depends on its format. Locally produced talk radio may offer opportunities for your staff to serve as experts. A public radio station may broadcast both hard news and feature stories, making it similar to a newspaper, with similar opportunities to tell your story.

Building a relationship with your local television or radio station is a lot like building a relationship with a newspaper, Lynsen says. The big difference is that you’ll hear “no” much more. “But,” he says, “a victory in broadcast is worth more than a victory in print, simply because more eyes will see it and more ears will hear it. It elevates your brand and your work to a whole new level.”

Once your story has appeared in the newspaper, on television or on the radio, social media can multiply the message. “I get a lot of mileage from the column,” says Borgmann. She shares each column on Facebook and posts it to Red-tail’s website. To give the column a longer shelf-life on the website, she takes out anything time sensitive, such as the date of an upcoming hike.

A story in a larger media outlet provides validation for your organization or your mission. But when it’s the reporter’s work instead of your own, it’s never going to be exactly what you hoped. “It may not be perfect, but unless it is negative or flat out wrong, share it,” says Kahn. “And if facts are wrong, let the reporter know, nicely, and they will likely make the correction and be appreciative of your help.”

At a recent Red-tail Conservancy board meeting, the executive director suggested that Borgmann cut back on writing the newspaper column to have more time for development work. “No!” the board members said. They were all hearing great things about the column and actually wanted her to write more, not less. As the board members spoke about the benefits, Borgmann could see how the column is not only increasing awareness of the land trust with the public, but is also reinforcing its mission with its donors.

Borgmann’s experience shows that while media relations can seem like a “nice to have” role that can be put aside for more critical tasks, when done well, media relations is a critical task itself that can benefit the heart of any land trust’s operations.

Crisis Communications

“No one plans on having a crisis, or on being on the receiving end of bad media coverage, but preparing how your land trust will communicate during a crisis will help you weather the storm,” says Joshua Lynsen, media relations manager for the Land Trust Alliance.

Take time, either by yourself, with your boss or at a staff retreat to walk through a potential crisis, Lynsen says. Are there any crises that are foreseeable, such as a natural disaster or serious injury? Who will be your liaison with the media? Think about what message you want to convey (keep it simple and brief) and about who needs to approve messages and outreach strategies as they are developed in response to a crisis.

Of course, having an established relationship with your local media will make a big difference in how coverage of the incident plays out. You may want to reach out to a reporter with whom you have a good relationship, says Lynsen. At the very least, your existing relationships will let you know what to expect from the reporters covering your story.