AudiencScapes

By Hannah Bowen, Africa project manager, InterMedia

(Washington, D.C.)--I recently met with a group of developing-country journalists who were brought here by the Population Reference Bureau to report on the Women Deliver conference and share ideas about how to improve coverage of health issues in their countries.

We talked about how they could identify audiences for such issues and reach out to them. I also asked them about their relationship with the development community, prompting a lively discussion about how development groups can do a better job communicating with them.

The bottom line: journalists are equally as concerned about being "used" by development organizations as they are by other interest groups, be they politicians or businesses or otherwise. Benevolent intentions do not necessarily translate into positive practices when it comes to seeking publicity on a given topic or project. Here are a few key tips from the journalists in attendance:

1) Reporters have to translate complex issues into stories that their audiences can understand. So development groups need to explain these issues as clearly as possible. Many journalists in developing countries are generalists—often by necessity in understaffed newsrooms and or due to a lack of training opportunities—so they may need extra background information and tips on how to present technical health/ agriculture/ economic/ governance stories in ways that the average audience member will understand and value.

2) Personalize the issues. While journalists are sometimes accuse the media of avoiding coverage of development issues in favor of more sensational stories, the journalists I met with complained that development groups don’t understand audience behavior. To grab an audience, they need more than just statistics and program plans and impact evaluations: they need to put a human face on it all. Development groups should be ready with names and contact information for individuals who are either experiencing a problem in question or benefiting from a given solution. Real-life stories bring issues to life.

3) Stay in contact with journalists on a regular basis-not just when a project is being launched or a new initiative is being crafted. Reporters said that they are more likely to cover development issues fully if they have an ongoing relationship with the people working on them, rather than one based on last-minute press releases and phone calls that arrive without context.

4) Don’t expect special treatment or free publicity at the expense of journalistic integrity. Many of the journalists described experiences in which NGOs suggested a profile of a particular project, but they expected to be able to dictate how the story would be reported. The result? Either a potentially biased story, or a refusal to cover the story at all, even if it would indeed be newsworthy.

5) Journalists are aware of development officials' internal pressures. They understand that you may want coverage of a program or project in order to prove to funders, higher-ups or monitoring and evaluation teams that the project is a success. Reporters do not want to be seen as furthering an internal goal as opposed to helping to educate the public.

Hannah Bowen is a Africa Project Manager for InterMedia
Hannah's other blog posts:
The Role of Gender in Media Consumption and Access to Health Services
Media's Role in Civic Education
“Open Government”: Open to Whom?
Information for Development Policy: Famine or Flood?
Photo Courtesy of Flickr and noodlepie.