Monday, November 14, 2011

Non-Profits in (or driving) the News Media

Very sorry this is late, I have been on the road since Thursday for work and a post definitely slipped my mind....but regardless.

The relationship between the media and non-profits is always interesting to follow, because unless you are the non-profit focusing on your issue, it's going to be hard to generate buzz on your organization. You have to make a huge impact with what you are doing, concrete evidence of saving lives and pictures of adorable children definitely help.

When I interned for a non-profit that worked on issues pertaining to Sudan and Southern Sudan and I was working on our media lists, I always wondered whether the journalists dreaded the call from our Communications Director. I mean, he was giving them a story, but were they ever sick of just covering what we gave them. I know they went out there and go more information, since most of them were on the ground, but it is an interesting dynamic. When you a journalist on the ground covering conflicts, like the one in Sudan and Southern Sudan at the time, you need the direction of the non-profits in some instances to point you where to go and where your connection say the story is occurring. But is there ever a feeling of needing to put the organization in the story because of the help they gave. The organization I worked for garnered a lot of attention from the journalists who we provided information do, but hopefully they didn't miss any part of the story because of that.

Non-profits definitely play a huge role in the stories that get out, especially in conflict zones, because they are the ones who are consistently on the ground and know what is going on at all times. But it is important to make sure that it's not just the non-profits who are telling the story all the time and getting the full coverage from all the organizations on the ground and also the people who live in the regions and are being most affected by these conflicts.

1 comment:

  1. That's an interesting though and a tricky question to answer. I've worked for a couple of non-profits, and there was definitely a feeling of wanting the "issue" to get publicity and not necessarily the NGO itself. Of course in order to talk about our projects we had to garner interest in the NGO. One of them simply had whatever country they were targeting eventually break off and become independent of the program somewhat. They were still a part of it, but they had their own staff and headquarters to control things in their own country.

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