Working with the Media When the Topic is Not Warm and Fuzzy

The Fortune Society
May 10, 2005

© 2005 Progressive PR Professionals

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JoAnne Page, Executive Director
The Fortune Society

At The Fortune Society, Ms. Page works on behalf of people who are returning to New York City from prison or jail. Despite the public's antipathy towards people who have served time, The Fortune Society has generated a lot of positive coverage for their programs and clients.

The Fortune Society provides an "environment where people can change" and offers services to individuals who have completed their prison sentence and are re-entering the community. They have many deeply entrenched issues and face many obstacles. The Society operates four sites and is "one-stop shopping" for educational, health, housing, training and referrals.

Their mission includes advocacy, therefore she pursues any and all opportunities to speak with media as well as public speaking. She also trains staff and clients to speak with the media. Her Deputy Director is a formerly incarcerated person and he does a lot of the media work as well.

Frequently, media professionals approach her with a sort of "casting director" mentality. She doesn't accept situations where she is being asked to provide a "target," but when they arise, she uses the inquiry to educate the producer/reporter and often they come back to her with a fairer approach.

On adversarial programs, such as "The O'Reilly Factor," representatives get their few minutes of say, but then the name of the game is to interrupt as often as possible to make your points. Her specific advice for these venues:

• Speak to the audience, not to the interviewer.
• Build your case on "shared common sense decency perspective" to hook the viewing audience, who have not thought about your issue from that angle.
• Shift the frame. "If you use their frame, then you're dead in the water."
• Create the context.
• Learn to speak in their rhythm, pace.
• Try to make only three points and keep returning to them.

She builds relationships with the media by being available. She wants to be the first person a reporter calls as a source on criminal justice issues. So she will spend time helping them even when Fortune doesn't appear in the story.

When Joel Steinberg was housed at their transitional residence, "The Castle," he arrived with a large contingent of reporters, photographers and TV trucks, even helicopters. The press camped out in front of the Castle for weeks. She focused on building an alliance with the media. She returned every call and gave people her personal cell phone number. They brought them water because it was a hot summer. They arranged to meet individually with reporters for interviews.

If something negative happens, point out to the reporters familiar with the organization that the group has done much good and this single incident could jeopardize its ability to deliver services.

• Keep on message.
• Own the stage.
• Be human and touch the humanity of others.

With her long time media consultant, Andy Morrison Associates, she works to generate positive coverage by building a target list, arranging breakfast meetings with reporters, producers and editors. She offers her views on the issues and potential story ideas.

Joanne feels that press coverage supports funding and fundraising for the organization, attracts all kinds of supporter and helps to fulfill their advocacy mission. She feels it is easier to get the attention of elected officials because Fortune gets media coverage of their issues. She feels their advocacy helps clients get jobs by influencing attitudes. Media generates more Google coverage of them, which in turn leads to more media coverage - for example, a "The Daily Show" spoof that contrasted Martha Stewart's return from prison to that of the average Fortune client came from a Google search! "Doing media is like throwing bread on the water; you never know who is going to respond."

She is very creative about getting coverage on "different" pages of the newspaper. They got in the home and design section of the Times with a story about a castle resident who decorated his room in an elaborate and fanciful way. There was a piece in a food section about teaching people returning from prison to eat asparagus and other healthy foods. She tries to do stories that are myth-busting and making the issue human.

It was obvious that Joanne enjoys speaking with the media. She feels she is using her trial lawyer skills in a new way.

Submitted by Janet Falk and Sara Stuart