| How do I build a media list? | Look for media outlets in the communities affected by your work and reporters who cover topics like yours. Build a list of contacts and keep it updated year-round. |
As nonprofit managers, social impact workers, or event hosts, our goal is to raise awareness of issues and promote action for our causes. If your work relies on mobilizing others’ time, resources, and attention, you likely want to find journalists to cover your cause. Even when we diligently build lists of our supporters, it can feel uphill to break through to society as a whole. This is why, even with a healthy supporter base, you probably need media coverage.
Finding journalists to gain media coverage is one of the best ways to do three things:
Media helps us understand the world around us, what’s important in it, and what’s ‘going on’. Media is much broader than high-profile coverage or prime-time news. It comes in many shapes and sizes; print, digital, streamed, or broadcasted. It’s morning television segments, ‘things–in–town’ articles, and talk radio between songs or on talk-jockey shows.
National media covers stories of interest to people across the country, local media covers events and issues relevant to your region, and many reporters focus on specific topics. It’s tempting to chase high profile coverage, which is competitive and bigger picture. That’s not always the best approach. Your work has its place in the media landscape, and your can find it.
The best way to earn media coverage is to determine which scope and topics best describe your story, proactively find the journalists and outlets who match, and then save their contact information and ‘beat’ to your media list.
Not all journalists cover the same stories or reach the same audiences. Media is divided into ‘beats’, or areas of specialization. For example, one reporter may specialize in climate or environment issues, and another outlet may only cover local news or events. Determining your organization or event’s fit within these beats is the best way to earn media coverage.
If you’re running activities in a city or town, find the local journalists – you need local coverage if you want event attendees. If you’re working on policy change, then find outlets specializing in exploring those issues. A journalist’s job is to tell the stories that matter to their audience; your best chance is to show how your story and their audience align.
Like the rest of us, reporters have limited time and space; clearly showing why your story matters to their audience helps attract a reporter’s attention. Although flashy or hard-news coverage feels prestigious, remember, media is diverse. Dedicated coverage in a local feel-good story may educate or reach the right audiences better than a foot-note in a national story.
Identifying your beats — the areas your organization, event, or issue fits within — will help earn the attention you need.
Once you’ve defined your beat, you need to find out who covers it. There are paid tools and indexes to help identify journalists, but tools like MuckRack are prohibitively expensive.
You don’t need them. In the digital world, most journalists (and outlets) can be found for free with a few hours of digging online. Discovering beat journalists involves two complementary approaches: first, an outlet-based approach; and second, searching through journalists’ relational networks for reporters you’ve missed.
We suggest both approaches. A little bit of online sleuthing can save a lot of money!
The first step is to identify outlets that cover your beat, and their newsroom contacts. The contacts are listed on the ‘about us’ or ‘contact us’ pages, and can be a general email address, or the email or an editor in chief or section editor.
In recent years, the North American media ecosystem has seen an increase in local papers owned in independent trusts. You can often find additional regional or highly local outlets through links or indexes on their webpages.
As anyone running a public inbox knows, email inboxes get cluttered. Yet, most journalists are online. If you can connect directly with an individual reporter through a personal address or social media account, you’ll have better luck.
If you don’t know where to start, try searching Google for stories like the one you are trying to tell. Then move to social media channels and search or browse by keywords, hashtags, and mentions.
Many journalists are active on sites like X (Twitter), Instagram, or Substack. If the reporter, anchor, producer, or editor lists their contact information it means they want to hear from you.
Journalists also follow others on their beats, including freelance writers. Scroll through these following lists to help round out your media list. And remember, make sure your media list tracks social media handles!
When nonprofits think of media coverage, we often think of the ‘issue of the day’ stories: front-page news, prime-time interviews, or national coverage. These can shape public opinion but only when they are part of a sustained conversation. Unless we’re a government minister, large-scale corporation, or fate uniquely positions us, this type of coverage is hard to obtain, and not always as powerful as we assume. Find your niche and build from there.
Make it easy to cover your story. Like many of us, journalists have deadlines, tough decisions, and too much information to sort through. The more you do to find journalists who cover your topic, and the more open-minded you are about where your story may fit, the more likely you are to have your work reach the right audience.
Don’t give up. People consume media every-day, passively and actively, whether through reading articles in print or online, or absorbing the radio, television, or social media articles broadcast in the background. They are waiting for your story.
Your work is important, and it has its place. You just need to find, save, and contact the journalists with interests matching yours. Odds are there is a journalist in your area right now, ready to share your efforts with the world.
Q: How do I … build a media list?
A: Don’t wait for journalists to find you! Find journalists on your beat(s), and tag them in your CRM or mailing software.
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