[NLA] Discussion: Working effectively with the media

[David Rosen]

Don and other colleagues,

Thank you for joining in, Don.  Your insights are invaluable.  I have
forwarded  your message to our Massachusetts public policy media
committee, and we will be discussing this at our February meeting.
I urge NLA subscribers to share Don's message with their own state
and urban literacy coalitions.  Having a local reporter with an adult
and family, literacy beat  would make a big difference.

David J. Rosen
NLA List Moderator

DBlockGPLC at aol.com wrote:

"Dear colleagues:
     Up to now I have stayed on the sidelines during this NLA
discussion of how to work with the media. However, the
discussion touches very close to home for me.  My family
owns a media company which includes two large newspapers
among other properties.  I grew up in a family that lived and
breathed the newspaper business every day.  Yet I have never
worked there, except for a brief internship.  Instead, I have
spent the last 21 years in the field of adult literacy.  So I have
what might be a unique perspective on how literacy programs
can work effectively with the media.
     Perhaps the biggest challenge for our field in working with
newspapers is that adult literacy is not a "beat" for any reporter.
Public schools have a beat, higher education has a beat, and
social services have a beat.  This means that, at larger newspapers,
a full-time reporter is assigned to those areas and gets to have,
over a period of years, a deep knowledge of the subject matter
and who the experts are.  Adult education is not a large enough
field to merit its own beat reporter. What happens in many cases
is that a different reporter is assigned to do an adult literacy story
each time that such a story is written.  With no background in the
topic, that reporter is bound to produce a very superficial, even
unfairly biased story, given the tight deadlines of most
metropolitan papers.  Example:  I once had a reporter call me at
1:30 p.m. for a story which had a 5:00 p.m. deadline.  He had never
written a story about adult literacy in his journalism career.  He
had three and a half hours to learn everything there was to know
about adult literacy, write the story, and submit it for the next
day's paper.  And if I wanted the story to be done at all, I needed to
go along with these limitations. It wasn't the reporter's fault.
The time limit and the topic were assigned by his editor.
     It is very important that we in adult literacy learn how the media
operate in assigning and allocating stories to reporters.  That is why
we need public relations expertise in our organizations.  My agency
has a full-time public relations director.  If your agency can't afford
that, at least one of your staff can take a course in public relations
and how it works.
     Right now we at GPLC have gotten out of the trap of having a
different reporter every time a story is assigned.  After many years,
we have a single reporter at the largest daily in Pittsburgh who has
become almost a beat reporter on adult literacy.  She has been
following one literacy student from enrollment through her studies
with us and has been collecting information for over a year.  This
close relationship with a reporter is unusual in the field of adult
literacy, but I can wager that all the colleges and universities in your

area have this type of relationship with their local media.
     So one key to working with the media is to build close
relationships with media professionals, including reporters.  They
become your advocates inside the media, and when you need their
help in a pinch, they  will be knowledgeable enough to help in the
right way.
     I have to constantly remind myself that there are 2,000 nonprofit
organizations in my city, all clamoring for media attention.  In order
to stand out from the crowd, literacy programs must make sure that
there are editors and reporters in the media who are knowledgeable
about our issues. It is our job to educate them about our topic.
     I hope that this is useful for some of you on the NLA list."

Don Block
Greater Pittsburgh Literacy Council
dblockgplc at aol.com
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