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Murali Shanmugavelan is a journalist and editor at Panos. He told us what kind of stories he’d like to receive from us as an editor of newspaper.
Traditional print media is still very relevant. Murali emphasized a couple of points:
News articles should be stories. Advocacy groups often post just their success stories. These tend to be boring. Do include your interesting failures as well, also any trouble you encountered during the campaign. These make a story livelier. Try to include portraits and views of people ‘on the ground’, those who are most affected by your campaign. They are also ‘experts’ in their own right.
Don’t use jargon, try to have a glossary ready that gives terms to use in articles. An example:
"Clorophlyll makes mood by photosynthesis." The essence of this could be written as: "Green leaves make food with the help of light."
ICT issues are a particularly difficult message to get across, since they don’t tie to a basic human need (food, security, trade, nature…) – so try to emphasize the impact of ICTs upon people’s lives.
Also, learn from other organizations that are experts in this area (GreenPeace, Oxfam), and ask for professional advice (Panos, for instance).
