Good News in the Local Media
There is no shortage of ‘bad news’ stories about the Catholic Church.
Even when they are reported fairly, they still leave a nasty taste at
the back of the throat with the nagging question: Why do they – the
media – only report the scandals, the negative? Over a period of time,
this can build in an almost paranoiac way until people start talking
about anti-Catholic conspiracies and institutional bias, as we have
seen in recent years with the BBC.
The problem however is not the way the media report our ‘bad news’ (and they do the same for every organisation, from the Football Association to the Royal Family), but the way we are so often woefully unskilled and unimaginative in getting our ‘good news’ into the media. Which Church do you recognise – the scandal-rocked monolith full of out-of-touch bureaucrats, perverts and hypocrites (or so it would seem from the media), or the caring community that prays together and strives to make this world a better place? This local church, the parish community, is where ordinary people are so often doing extraordinary things – caring for the marginalised and the vulnerable, building bridges with people of other faiths and cultures, providing wholesome education, supporting the sick, the frail, the imprisoned, the victims, raising funds for those caught up in the atrocities in Sudan or a community centre on an inner city housing estate.
But the media aren’t interested in piddling little stories like these, I hear you cry. Yes, it is true they will not make it to the pages of The Times or warrant a feature on Newsnight, but there are thousands of journalists out there whose working days revolve around and rely upon reporting activities just like these.
The local media attract amazingly high audience and readership figures. Up to 90% of the adult population read a local or regional newspaper; readership has grown by 15% in the past ten years, and the President of the Newspaper Society, John Robertson, claims that “people trust regional and local newspapers more than any other media and are increasingly seeking out relevant, detailed local news and information which only the regional press can provide.”
Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, the number of people listening to their BBC Local Radio breakfast show is on a par with Today. This is especially true on Sunday mornings when the majority of the BBC’s 40 stations around the country (not forgetting the BBC’s national services in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), broadcast programmes with a faith perspective that reflect what local people believe and what they are doing in their communities.
The local media have been sadly neglected by the Church, so it was encouraging to have had such a good attendance at the two workshops I was invited to lead recently at the Loud and Clear? Conference in Exeter. Coming from parishes and church groups, they were keen to explore what opportunities were available to them to generate positive publicity – to get the ‘good news’ out there to counter, at least in part, the proliferation of ‘bad news’.
Knowing what radio stations we have in our locality, what newspapers are published – both paid for and free ones, and which regional television services cover our parish are important starting points. If we truly wish to engage with the media, we have got to be media consumers, no matter how unpalatable the diet may seem sometimes. But we need to go deeper than that: to explore what values dictate what makes a story newsworthy, what individual channels consider to be their news priorities, and how to get involved with them.
News, by definition, has to have some form of ‘novelty value’. I hesitate to use the word gimmick, but when there are, for instance, thousands of fundraising initiatives going on in our neighbourhood year in, year out, we need to find something different that will attract media attention. So a meeting to announce that our parish is launching an appeal to restore the church tower will hardly merit a mention. But if we were to convince Father that it would be worth his while to abseil down the side of the tower in his cassock to inaugurate the appeal … the likelihood of a local newspaper photographer, a reporter and even a TV crew attending would be greatly increased.
Publicity needs to be an integral part of any parish initiative: it cannot be merely an afterthought. Ongoing or recurring events might get a mention as a ‘What’s On’ item, but the media could well turn up at your annual Autumn Fair if a local celebrity were to open it – provided they are told about it, of course!
Local media often operate under great restraints and pressures in terms of resources, personnel and time. A three-hour radio speech-based programme is a lot of airtime to fill, and one of the most common complaints from the broadcasters is that the Churches neglect to inform them what is happening (and then complain about low attendance or support). Something as simple as making sure the local radio station and newspaper are sent the parish bulletin can generate coverage for an event.
Having produced and presented BBC Radio Bristol’s Sunday breakfast show for several years in the 1980s, I know how newsletters provide a vital resource when planning a programme. A church anniversary, for example, would give me the opportunity to visit the parish, talk about its history (nostalgia is big on local radio!), and meet some of the characters associated with it. Likewise, a special initiative to support the CAFOD Fast Day, Housing Justice on Homelessness Sunday, or the Jesuit Refugee Service on World Migration Day, or a parish school getting a glowing Ofsted report, all reflect positive aspects of a locality: local people doing things. These are the kind of activities that the local media cover so well, and churches – locally based and at the core of their communities – are ideally placed to provide these kinds of features.
News releases, well-written and presented, can prompt publicity, but with several hundred received in a newsroom every day, they inevitably face stiff competition. A far more effective and productive strategy is to find out who is responsible for community or ethical issues in any particular media outlet, and to make them aware of what priorities your parish has and what community facilities it provides. Journalists (and I can say this because I am among the guilty) do have a lazy streak in them that means that, once they have a contact for a particular topic on their database, it seems pretty pointless to go and find another who would be an unknown quantity anyway. Local spokespeople who can speak from a Christian perspective on schools and young people, health and the elderly, refugees and asylum seekers, family life and a whole host of other topics, are always welcome. And there is always Thought for the Day for which local radio is constantly recruiting intelligent, articulate contributors.
Of course, news releases can be effective if what they contain is truly newsworthy. But news releases demand we unlearn all we learnt about writing essays or reports. The latter would normally contain an introduction that leads the reader through a logical sequence of points to reach a conclusion; by contrast, the relevance and interest of the story in a news release are assessed within the headline and first paragraph, so these have got to contain all the key points. A news release has to start with the conclusion, followed by additional information in descending order of importance.
Writing and issuing news releases is just one element of a parish communications strategy that seems ideally suited for lay collaboration. Media courses at schools and colleges are producing would-be journalists and reporters in their droves, and with adequate training, a creative mind, and a commitment to using the media to spread the good news about what is happening within the Church at a local level, a parish communications officer could be a real bonus to any parish and ultimately the Gospel – the ‘Good News’ – itself.
Ged Clapson is Communications Officer for the British Jesuits, and also provides workshops in media skills and strategies for parishes and church organisations.
Useful URL : http://www.jesuit.org.uk/
The problem however is not the way the media report our ‘bad news’ (and they do the same for every organisation, from the Football Association to the Royal Family), but the way we are so often woefully unskilled and unimaginative in getting our ‘good news’ into the media. Which Church do you recognise – the scandal-rocked monolith full of out-of-touch bureaucrats, perverts and hypocrites (or so it would seem from the media), or the caring community that prays together and strives to make this world a better place? This local church, the parish community, is where ordinary people are so often doing extraordinary things – caring for the marginalised and the vulnerable, building bridges with people of other faiths and cultures, providing wholesome education, supporting the sick, the frail, the imprisoned, the victims, raising funds for those caught up in the atrocities in Sudan or a community centre on an inner city housing estate.
But the media aren’t interested in piddling little stories like these, I hear you cry. Yes, it is true they will not make it to the pages of The Times or warrant a feature on Newsnight, but there are thousands of journalists out there whose working days revolve around and rely upon reporting activities just like these.
The local media attract amazingly high audience and readership figures. Up to 90% of the adult population read a local or regional newspaper; readership has grown by 15% in the past ten years, and the President of the Newspaper Society, John Robertson, claims that “people trust regional and local newspapers more than any other media and are increasingly seeking out relevant, detailed local news and information which only the regional press can provide.”
Meanwhile, in many parts of the country, the number of people listening to their BBC Local Radio breakfast show is on a par with Today. This is especially true on Sunday mornings when the majority of the BBC’s 40 stations around the country (not forgetting the BBC’s national services in Wales, Scotland and Northern Ireland), broadcast programmes with a faith perspective that reflect what local people believe and what they are doing in their communities.
The local media have been sadly neglected by the Church, so it was encouraging to have had such a good attendance at the two workshops I was invited to lead recently at the Loud and Clear? Conference in Exeter. Coming from parishes and church groups, they were keen to explore what opportunities were available to them to generate positive publicity – to get the ‘good news’ out there to counter, at least in part, the proliferation of ‘bad news’.
Knowing what radio stations we have in our locality, what newspapers are published – both paid for and free ones, and which regional television services cover our parish are important starting points. If we truly wish to engage with the media, we have got to be media consumers, no matter how unpalatable the diet may seem sometimes. But we need to go deeper than that: to explore what values dictate what makes a story newsworthy, what individual channels consider to be their news priorities, and how to get involved with them.
News, by definition, has to have some form of ‘novelty value’. I hesitate to use the word gimmick, but when there are, for instance, thousands of fundraising initiatives going on in our neighbourhood year in, year out, we need to find something different that will attract media attention. So a meeting to announce that our parish is launching an appeal to restore the church tower will hardly merit a mention. But if we were to convince Father that it would be worth his while to abseil down the side of the tower in his cassock to inaugurate the appeal … the likelihood of a local newspaper photographer, a reporter and even a TV crew attending would be greatly increased.
Publicity needs to be an integral part of any parish initiative: it cannot be merely an afterthought. Ongoing or recurring events might get a mention as a ‘What’s On’ item, but the media could well turn up at your annual Autumn Fair if a local celebrity were to open it – provided they are told about it, of course!
Local media often operate under great restraints and pressures in terms of resources, personnel and time. A three-hour radio speech-based programme is a lot of airtime to fill, and one of the most common complaints from the broadcasters is that the Churches neglect to inform them what is happening (and then complain about low attendance or support). Something as simple as making sure the local radio station and newspaper are sent the parish bulletin can generate coverage for an event.
Having produced and presented BBC Radio Bristol’s Sunday breakfast show for several years in the 1980s, I know how newsletters provide a vital resource when planning a programme. A church anniversary, for example, would give me the opportunity to visit the parish, talk about its history (nostalgia is big on local radio!), and meet some of the characters associated with it. Likewise, a special initiative to support the CAFOD Fast Day, Housing Justice on Homelessness Sunday, or the Jesuit Refugee Service on World Migration Day, or a parish school getting a glowing Ofsted report, all reflect positive aspects of a locality: local people doing things. These are the kind of activities that the local media cover so well, and churches – locally based and at the core of their communities – are ideally placed to provide these kinds of features.
News releases, well-written and presented, can prompt publicity, but with several hundred received in a newsroom every day, they inevitably face stiff competition. A far more effective and productive strategy is to find out who is responsible for community or ethical issues in any particular media outlet, and to make them aware of what priorities your parish has and what community facilities it provides. Journalists (and I can say this because I am among the guilty) do have a lazy streak in them that means that, once they have a contact for a particular topic on their database, it seems pretty pointless to go and find another who would be an unknown quantity anyway. Local spokespeople who can speak from a Christian perspective on schools and young people, health and the elderly, refugees and asylum seekers, family life and a whole host of other topics, are always welcome. And there is always Thought for the Day for which local radio is constantly recruiting intelligent, articulate contributors.
Of course, news releases can be effective if what they contain is truly newsworthy. But news releases demand we unlearn all we learnt about writing essays or reports. The latter would normally contain an introduction that leads the reader through a logical sequence of points to reach a conclusion; by contrast, the relevance and interest of the story in a news release are assessed within the headline and first paragraph, so these have got to contain all the key points. A news release has to start with the conclusion, followed by additional information in descending order of importance.
Writing and issuing news releases is just one element of a parish communications strategy that seems ideally suited for lay collaboration. Media courses at schools and colleges are producing would-be journalists and reporters in their droves, and with adequate training, a creative mind, and a commitment to using the media to spread the good news about what is happening within the Church at a local level, a parish communications officer could be a real bonus to any parish and ultimately the Gospel – the ‘Good News’ – itself.
Ged Clapson is Communications Officer for the British Jesuits, and also provides workshops in media skills and strategies for parishes and church organisations.
Useful URL : http://www.jesuit.org.uk/
Images
© Clifton Diocese 2010 | Disclaimer
