Talking About Resilience to the Media
Media attention can be a key tool in promoting The Road to Resilience -- to both encourage participation in your local events and increase awareness of the ways to build resilience for people in your community.
While gaining the media's interest takes some work and time, the results can be very rewarding when you're successful.
The following ideas are designed to help you seek media coverage to promote information about resilience in your community as well as public attendance at community forums or talks you may be providing.
- Target national awareness days, weeks and months to pitch issue-specific stories about resilience. For example, the media might be interested in ways to build resilience in the face of a life-threatening illness during Breast Cancer Awareness month in October.
- Scan your local news and seek out opportunities to connect resilience messages to issues facing your community. For example, if there is a plant closure and widespread layoffs or the community mourns the tragic loss of a favorite son, these events serve as an opportunity for talking about resilience and an opportunity to provide needed information to the public.
- If you are able, seek out opportunities to highlight how an individual in your community has demonstrated resilience. This could serve as an opportunity for your community to celebrate how someone has turned tragedy and hardship into something positive, while pointing out the ways they used to build resilience.
- Watch for national news headlines reporting the latest release of a new survey or poll about how Americans are feeling or coping. Offer yourself as a local expert on resilience who can speak from a community perspective about how people bounce back from tragedy along with ways to build resilience and local resources for those still having a hard time.
- Pitch the media on stories of recovery in relation to anniversaries of major events that may have impacted your community. Like the one-year anniversary of the 9/11 terrorist attacks, your community is likely to have events that impacted many people from earthquakes to fires. You can offer yourself as an expert for media stories reflecting on how people have rebuilt their lives.
