If you aren’t communicating with your community members about your issues, then who is?
Work to get your local media to cover your city's needs
Develop a relationship with your local media. This is a great opportunity to educate community members about what your city needs. This will help spur action and hold legislators accountable.
- Choose an issue where the benefit to real people is very clear.
- Explain the role of your local legislators, be honest and clear about who is helping and who you still need help from.
- Draft an opinion editorial and submitting it to your local paper; follow that up with a call to the editor.
Tell your story through the eyes of your residents
Legislators are focusing on core issues. Talk about your issues in terms of the impacts on your residents, not in terms of how they make running city government more difficult.
- You represent the same constituents as your legislators, so you are a trusted voice on how the impacts of legislative decisions are felt on the ground.
- What will be most compelling to them is how constituents are impacted by what the state does, not how your city government is affected.
- Will something drive costs for your city? How will you pay for it, and what impact will higher taxes or lower services have on your constituents?
- When services will be cut, who uses them and why?
Reach what a panel of reporters had to say during the AWC Annual Conference about working with the media in the 21st century.
Reach out to the media