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Welcome To Core Volunteer Training!
www.citizensclimatelobby.org
7 Steps to Jump-Start
Your Media Work
Oct 25, 2022�
Presentation Slides: �cclusa.org/jump-start-media-slides�
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If interested and able, we’d love for you to…
Creating Community
About Our Speaker
Charlotte Ward
Three Learning Goals
What actions can you take to get started quickly?
How can you go further to maximize your media efforts?
Why is media work impactful and important?
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Agenda
Why work on media outreach?
7 Steps to jump-start your media work
Brainstorm Breakout: Start planning!
Q&A discussion
Item 01
Item 02
Item 03
Item 04
Agenda
Why work on media outreach?
Messaging for our media work
Q&A discussion
Item 01
Item 02
Item 03
Item 04
7 Steps to jump-start your media work
Agenda
Why work on media outreach?
7 Steps to jump-start your media work
Q & A discussion
Item 01
Item 02
Item 03
Why is media work important?
How can local media efforts help?
Messaging for our media work
What are we advocating for?
7 Steps to Jump-Start
Your CCL Media Work
Step 1: Allocate a Media Manager
Why?
Media managers receive emails about
How to receive Media Manager resources
Group Leaders automatically receive CCL’s media outreach emails.
Group Leaders can add another volunteer as a media manager via their chapter’s roster.
Email charlotte.ward@citizensclimate.org
and ask to be added.
Go further: Subscribe to CCL’s
Community Resources
Subscribe to:
The Writers Circle
For peer support and ideas
Media Relations forums
For timely topic ideas for
LTEs, plus forum discussions
answering questions about
all kinds of media work
Step 2: Find and Share
Letter Writing Opportunities
Why?
You can achieve quick results when you mobilize volunteers in your chapter to write letters.
It’s an opportunity to steer the conversation toward talking points and solutions we wish to elevate.
You can reach a wide audience in your community and help educate people about how the climate crisis impacts them and how it can be solved.
Finding opportunities and next steps
Look for opportunities in local papers and alert keen writers in your chapter. Use email or create a spreadsheet that writers can update and subscribe to.
Download the latest “LTE Topics” document from the Media Relations section of CCL Community. You’ll find timely talking points which you may be able to apply to local news and concerns about climate change.
Host a chapter Letter Writing Zoom Party or attend our national LTE event the second Tuesday of every month at 6:30 pm (ET).
Go further: Consider a rural LTEs project
Make a list of rural newspapers in your state.
Work with your state coordinator to locate volunteers who might write.
Test out submitting letters from other parts of the state (some newspapers will print them!)
Step 3: Boost your visibility with bigger pieces (op-eds)
Why?
Op-eds have a powerful impact and give authority.
People across the political spectrum can be influenced and have their views altered by persuasive op-eds.
The word count is longer with between 600 and 750 words to make your case.
Tips for crafting an op-ed
It’s great to weave in personal and local perspectives plus why we need to act, the solutions available, and what more is needed. Make a call to action!
Consider working with local community voices who are trusted messengers where you live. They could make a case for the benefits of climate solutions for your city or state.
We also provide timely op-ed templates on CCL Community plus writing guides designed to help volunteers to pen original op-eds.
The power of storytelling
A recent report from the Yale Project on Climate Change Communication found that hearing about people's personal experience with climate impacts such as extreme heat, floods or drought can help folks to change their minds. ��Can you write something heartfelt about the climate impacts you have experienced, or of someone you know? It can help to move people to be more favorable to climate action or solutions like carbon fee and dividend.
What’s your climate story?
“I’m lucky to have lived in some beautiful places.
A decade ago, I moved to my father’s native Australia and fell in love with the natural beauty of rainforests and bushland and the rainbow colors of aquatic life around the Great Barrier Reef.
From the very young to the very old, we instinctively seek peaceful moments in the natural world. Greenery, vast waters and open skies enhance our well-being.
I often daydream about taking my kids to experience the locations I love in Australia and California. But in recent years, climate change has exacerbated wildfires and coral bleaching, threatening those places.
My children are 6 and 3. Will these natural wonders survive their lifetimes or even their fleeting years to adulthood?”
Go further: Contact the opinion page editor
Call the opinion page editor to discuss what content they are looking for.
What interesting stories and perspectives can you pitch?
Who are the trusted messengers you could ask to join together to make a statement on climate?
Step 4: Link up with your liaison
Why?
Your chapter liaison is the person who speaks regularly with your local Congressional office.
They know what your member of Congress and their staff are most concerned about.
Find out the best talking points to cover in your letters and op-eds.
How to get the insider lowdown
Group leaders can connect media team members with the liaisons for representative and senators.
Ask liaisons for information about the issues and local industries local members of Congress seem most concerned about.
Tailor your letters and op-eds to feature insight on these issues — thinking about your audience of one!
Discuss the most convincing case for climate solutions in your district, city or state.
Go further: Share your success with Congress
If your letter or op-ed is published, ask the relevant chapter liaison to pass your success on to their contacts in congressional offices.
Go to cclusa.org/write and paste your published piece into a message to your member of Congress.
Step 5: Make the news
Why?
Earned media is increasingly important.
Being covered in a newspaper article,
or even on local TV or radio, spreads the word about your chapter’s work and
climate solutions.
You can reach new potential volunteers.
It attracts the attention of your member of Congress.
Navigating the local media landscape
Which journalists cover climate or conservation stories in your area? Pay attention to the local reporters writing about these topics.
Gather emails and phone numbers from the “Staff” and “Contact” website pages of news outlets. Create a spreadsheet of your local “media list” with contact information for local journalists.
Watch our “Generating News Coverage” training in the Media Relations section of CCL Community.
Go further: Tweet and meet journalists
Follow local journalists on Twitter and other social media and interact with them.
Will a journalist agree to a Zoom call or meet for a coffee?
You can be a trusted resource on climate. Nurture contacts you can contact immediately when news happens about climate action.
Step 6: Aim for an editorial
Why?
Editorials are different from op-eds. The editorial is the official view or stance of the newspaper.
Editorials are written by an independent editorial board, separate from the news arm of the newspaper.
They are influential, covering important topics.
Is there an editorial board?
Check to see if your local paper has an editorial board.
Information could be listed on the website or you could call the switchboard to ask.
If they don’t have an editorial board, focus on placing articles, TV segments and radio stories via press releases or pitching a story directly. We have detailed trainings on CCL Community for all of these.
Go further: Get editorial board ready
At key moments we reach out to editorial boards to ask them to take a position on climate policy, for example Earth Day.
To get familiar with the process, check out CCL’s generating editorial endorsements training. And check out our current editorial packet.
If you want to approach an editorial board and need help, contact steve@citizensclimate.org
Step 7: Get social
Why?
Social media is a great way to leverage your success.
It’s a free megaphone to highlight your work, congratulate a volunteer, thank a news outlet.
You can tag your member of Congress!
Work with your social media team
Work with your chapter’s social media team to broadcast your media successes on all your various social media pages.
Think about the different visual ways you can package your content. Get creative and include people in your photos as much as possible for higher engagement!
Don’t forget to tag your member of Congress!
Go further: Mobilize your chapter to help
Ask your chapter members to help to increase visibility on social media.
They can do this by retweeting, sharing, liking and commenting on your chapter’s social media posts.
You could even send out an email with all the links to make it super easy for them.
Time For Questions
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Brainstorm Breakout Session
In breakout rooms discuss:
What have you done already?
What are you interested in trying?
How will you start?
(6 minutes total, 2 minutes each )
How’d It Go?
Breakout rooms report back:
Which steps will you plan on taking?
What additional questions do you have?
Time For Questions
Click Participants & Raise Hand Or *9 If On The Phone
Share with social media, with your chapter, family and friends!
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Thank You!
Charlotte Ward email: charlotte.ward@citizensclimate.org
Questions? Ask on CCL Community’s Forums: https://community.citizensclimate.org/forums
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