Discover Three Highly Effective Strategies for Initiating and Maintaining Advocacy in Mainstream Media

In our previous newsletter, we explored valuable insights and Tips for Designing and Sustaining a Media Advocacy.

Now, let’s delve into the effective strategies for successfully collaborating with journalists to champion your advocacy cause.

When we embarked on designing Amref Health Africa’s spearheaded Health Systems Advocacy Partnership (HSAP) project, involving over 200 media actors as advocates, we understood the power of media in championing a given cause.

To begin, it was essential to clearly articulate the project’s purpose, objectives, and desired outcomes. The objective was to contribute to stronger health systems in Sub-Saharan Africa, specifically focusing on Sexual and Reproductive Health and Rights (SRHR). To this end, our advocacy efforts centered around strengthening human resources for health, ensuring access to essential sexual and reproductive health commodities, promoting good governance, alongside advocating for equitable health financing.

During one of the media roundtable discussions chaired by Joachim Osur and Dona Anyona, we gained invaluable insights into the media landscape and journalists’ preferences. In addition, we recognized that the media industry in the five countries targeted was still evolving, presenting an excellent opportunity for us to influence their decision-making processes.

However, we discovered that health-related topics weren’t as prominent as politics in the mainstream media. This was attributed to two main factors identified by the journalists during previously-held roundtable forums. Firstly, most media companies hadn’t adopted specialization in their newsrooms, resulting in journalists covering a wide range of topics. Secondly, reporters had limited expertise in specialized areas like health.

To address this challenge, we incorporated a programmatic solution by integrating health training into our overall project intervention strategy.

We designed a short training program specifically tailored to address health reporting and rolled it out during our training outreaches for journalists.

By implementing these strategies, we were able to effectively engage journalists, align their interests with our advocacy cause, and equip them with the necessary skills to report on health-related issues.

In the next issue of my newsletter, I will explore further strategies for sustaining media advocacy and maximizing its impact. 

Photo: Courtesy

Interview Experts: Enhancing Journalistic Coverage

To achieve our objectives, we recognized the importance of collaborating with health experts and experienced journalists who could provide valuable training and mentorship. And here, mentorship played a crucial role in offering personalized guidance, advice, and industry navigation support through one-on-one sessions. These sessions were designed to assist journalists in their professional growth.

Identifying a pool of health specialists proved to be a challenge for journalists, as they needed experts who could provide professional insights and stay up-to-date with industry trends. Such experts play a vital role in providing valuable information and story ideas for journalists to cover.

In response to this need, our project curated a comprehensive list of experts who were readily available for interviews at any time. Leveraging AMREF‘s extensive networks and rich history in the health sector, compiling this list was a seamless process. This symbiotic relationship between journalists and experts created a win-win situation, where journalists gained access to knowledgeable sources while experts received valuable media exposure.

In my upcoming newsletter, I will explore additional strategies for fostering successful collaborations between journalists and experts, ensuring impactful and comprehensive media coverage.

Photo: Courtesy

Funding Opportunity: Empowering Journalists for Impactful Stories

Journalists all over the globe face a significant challenge in securing funding to support their fieldwork while gathering impactful stories. Although our project did not have a specific budgetary allocation for this purpose, we recognized the need to establish a funding pool through partnerships and collaborations.

In the NGO sector, innovation is key, and we learned that what we lack, someone else may have in abundance. This understanding drove us to seek partnerships where we could secure funding to finance selected stories. Through these collaborations, we gradually accumulated a substantial amount of resources needed to support journalists’ reporting activities.

As health-related topics gained prominence in the media, so was the visibility of our project. In each of the five countries, discussions around health system strengthening became hot topics in both mainstream media and policymaking spaces.

What contributed to this remarkable success?

While not scientifically proven, I believe that enrolling news editors in our program played a significant role. Those who have worked in the media industry understand the influential position of news editors. They have the power to determine which stories make it to publications and airwaves at any given time.

By involving news editors, we strategically positioned health as a major theme, capturing their attention and influence. Furthermore, as editors gained new storytelling skills in the health domain, they became experts and role models for the reporters participating in our program.

In the next edition of our newsletter, we will explore additional strategies for securing funding and engaging key stakeholders to support media advocacy initiatives.

Photo: Courtesy

Rewards and Recognition: Motivating Journalists for Excellence

Every expert desires recognition for their work. It serves as a source of motivation to continue making significant contributions. Journalists, in particular, value more than just having their names credited in their articles—they seek additional rewards.

Although our project initially lacked a formal rewards program, as the corporate communications lead, I recognized the importance of implementing such a strategy to sustain the momentum of health journalism.

Drawing from my personal experience as a journalist, winning awards holds significant value—it establishes one’s reputation as a leader in the industry. Moreover, some journalists aspire to transition from the newsroom to fields like corporate communications and other related fields where an award can provide a competitive advantage during job interviews. True to my conviction, incorporating rewards into the project elevated the overall game.

So, how did this transformation occur?

Resource mobilization and partnership building played a pivotal role. We developed a comprehensive concept note and engaged in pitch sessions with partners. To our advantage, the media awards gala dinner was scheduled to coincide with an international health conference – the 2019 Africa Health Agenda International Conference (AHAIC 2019) in Kigali Rwanda. Consequently, our reward scope expanded beyond dishing out cash awards, scholarships, trophies, and certificates to include participation in the conference. Journalists found this proposition highly impressive.

Of course, raising the necessary funds became imperative. The scale of the endeavor was significant, with four reward categories—print, online, TV, and radio—and three winners in each category. Additionally, covering the travel expenses for the winners to participate in the conference required substantial financial resources.

Understanding the importance of delivering on promises, close to ten months to the event, we initiated behind-the-scenes preparations work. Armed with a concept note, we knocked on various purposefully to raise funds. Before we knew it, we had enough resources to foot our bills and as a result, host the awards gala dinner, which attracted participants from over 200 organizations worldwide.

These efforts proved fruitful, as our advocacy campaign generated significant media attention, with approximately 400 media mentions across the countries involved.

In the upcoming edition of this newsletter, I will delve into more details about the successes we achieved through our rewards and recognition program. Stay tuned for an inspiring account of our achievements.

Make sure you never miss an issue by clicking the “SUBSCRIBE” button in the upper right corner of the page.