Public Education and PR

The American Educational Research Association held a panel discussion last Thursday called Disseminating Education Research Through Electronic Media: Advice From E-Journalists. The panel focused on education researchers sharing their findings with e-journalists. Several journalists and bloggers spoke to the group about how best to communicate with journalists working in electronic media.

For public relations professionals, knowing how to communicate with the media and pitch stories is just a part of the job. Of course, some are better at it than others.

Within the last week I’ve had two interviews for internships where my main responsibility would be media relations. So, with media relations fresh on my mind, I started thinking about what advice I would give education researchers trying to communicate findings with journalists.

1. Know the journalist or medium. If you are researching a topic or have findings you think are interesting communicate that to an appropriate source. You should know what journalist or news outlet might be most interested in the information. This could involve reading other articles written by the journalist or reviewing other articles in the news medium and knowing whether your information “fits” with the other stories.
2. Know the trends or current topics. It’s important to stay on top of educational issues. Even if your research isn’t complete it can always provide a context for issues being discussed or add valuable knowledge to a current topic. Journalists might not want to write a story just about research; but, if it provides information about a current story or trend it becomes more valuable.
3. Be candid. Be honest about the research – don’t stretch the truth and exaggerate findings.
4. Help educate the journalist. It’s important to realize that even if you meet with a journalist your interview or research findings may only appear as one sentence in a story. However, you can give journalists a better understanding of an issue by answering their questions.

These four points are the ones that immediately came to mind when first reading about the AERA’s panel discussion, but I’m sure the list could be much longer.  Any additional thoughts on communicating research findings to journalists?