Shale Maulana, Center for Environmental Citizenship

Shale Maulana is Northwest summit coordinator for the Center for Environmental Citizenship and a student and activist at Seattle Central Community College.

Part of my internship at EnviroCitizen involves getting media attention for our summit, "Powered by Justice: Skills to Build Energy Alternatives." Radio stations and student, community, and local papers around Washington and Oregon are our targets for the summit. Student papers are the most important, since it is, after all, a student summit.

Right now, we have about five media volunteers. We found most of the volunteers through class presentations announcing the summit, plus connections I'd made before at Seattle Central. I sent an email to all the volunteers yesterday to call a media meeting for next Thursday. Monday, I'll make phone calls. Pulling together a meeting can be hard; everyone is so busy and has different schedules. Still, it's important that we have this meeting to make sure we get all the media attention we need to publicize our summit. Hopefully, it will come together. If not, we can figure something else out.

Media coverage can make a huge difference in a campaign, good or bad. At the University of Oregon, Taylor Stevenson, who attended one of EnviroCitizen's Summer Training Academies, ran a Vote Environment Campaign in support of Measure 27 last fall. Measure 27 was an initiative to require labeling of genetically modified foods in Oregon. Although the issue was a big one in the state's agricultural community, students were not well informed about it, so Taylor began doing voter registration and building awareness at her school.

The strongest part of her campaign was the media coverage. She had several volunteers write letters to the editor and articles to inform students of the importance of knowing what's in their food and understanding the international implications around economic justice issues and agriculture. The campaign succeeded in getting 10 media hits on campus and in community papers, and the students voted overwhelmingly in favor of Measure 27. In this situation, media was an effective way to gain visibility on an important issue.

In the World Trade Organization protests in Seattle in 1999, by contrast, protestors received a lot of bad press. While most protestors were nonviolent, a handful reacted to police intimidation tactics in less peaceful ways, and those few people were all over the news. The entire protest was labeled as violent, even as a riot. Meanwhile, the aggression and antagonism of the Seattle police were not portrayed in the media at all. Fortunately, people recorded the event, and videos, such as "This Is What Democracy Looks Like," showed the other side of the protest in a very different light than how the mass media covered it. The moral of the story is that it's important to make sure media coverage is done in an effective way that supports your cause. Also, we can reclaim the media through alternatives such as the Internet, home videos, radio, and other venues.

One strategy to ensure that your media coverage is effective is having a clear message. We are currently working on a media message that we will use with our media volunteers on this summit. A media message should be short and memorable. It's very helpful to have a message in mind when talking to the press or writing articles. A strong message will keep you on track. It should be something that will stick with people and that they can relate to, so that when they hear about the issue, they will think of your stance on it and why it should matter to them.

Creating such a message is one of the many things I've been working on for the past nine weeks. I've learned a lot about building relationships with reporters and creating effective strategies to get media attention. These are tools I will take with me back to Seattle Central in the fall, when I continue my student organizing there.