All the (Good) News that’s fit to print

“Journalists are only interested in bad news. Journalists only like disasters and coups and suffering.”

This is a real comment from a participant at a recent MediaTrain workshop in Kenya, but it echoes assertions made at practically every gathering where What Is News is discussed as part of our coaching basics.

There is some truth in this, but that seems to reflect more the appetites of society for the bad stuff rather than all the good news that is taking place, that is out there, and which deserves space in the media.

One of the problems, our trainers usually say to the “bad news” argument is that if individuals and organisations could identify and publicise data or information that shows progress, then more of it would get used in the media.

Packaging that information is often the key: a crisply-written headline with an eye-catching headline and first paragraph, a few quotes to give it humanity and immediacy, and some pictures that tell the story: that’s MediaTrain’s advice to all those who want more “good news” in our daily media diet.

Mogadishu. Hear the name of the capital and you instantly flinch in readiness for some more grim tales of suffering, privation and inhumanity. Right?

So hats off to the African Union peace-keeping media team in Mogadishu. Check out their press release below. Perhaps not the crispest headline or intro, perhaps not the best captions for photos: but the net result is a win for the boys in green.

Just a few hours later the story, much of it straight from the press release, was in the front page of the Guardian’s web edition and was still there several hours later. Google Mogadishu residents take to beaches and see how many other hits you get. We got six, at last count.

Proof positive that if you get your messages straight and deliver them in media-friendly form, good news sells.

Andy Hill, MediaTrain

From: AMISOM FORCE Headquarters <amisomforcehq@gmail.com>
Date: 6 November 2011 14:53
Subject: AMISOM PRESS RELEASE – Mogadishans Take to Beaches as City Reawakens

 

For Immediate Release

Mogadishans Take to Beaches as City Reawakens
Mogadishu, 06 November, 2011

Hundreds of Mogadishu residents last week took to the beaches for the first time in three years in a dramatic display of a new found sense of security following the forcing out from the city of Al Qaeda-linked terrorists.
The revelers, who included former President, Ali Mahdi Mohamed, converged on the scenic Lido beach on Friday where they enjoyed a game of football and took a dip in the waters.
Ever since the Somali National Army, with the support of the African Union Mission in Somalia, forced the extremists’ retreat in August, the capital has been experiencing something of a resurgence. Roads are being repaired, homes rebuilt and markets reopened. Real estate prices along Via Moscow have doubled and there are people out in the streets late into the night, despite the ongoing threat of terrorist attack.
Following a successful operation to secure parts the vast outlying district of Deynile, hundreds of thousands of people in the Afgoye corridor who had previously been prevented by the extremists from returning to their homes in the city are now streaming back.
Traffic at the Aden Abdulleh International Airport has also tripled and the line of ships waiting to dock at the seaport grows ever longer. The city has played host to several high profile visitors, including Turkish Prime Minister, Recep Erdogan, and a number of countries have reopened their embassies.
However, as the city reawakens, it is also experiencing problems common to other capitals around the world. Traffic jams along the busy streets are a perennial headache and crime rates are up, according to Mayor Mohammed Nur “Tarsan.” The AMISOM Police Component is helping to train the Somali police force, now numbering over 5000, to manage these challenges and the AU has appealed to the UN Security Council for help in deploying formed up police units to aid the effort.
Last week, the city’s business community presented a gift of thirty animals to AMISOM in appreciation of the Mission’s effort in helping secure the capital.
ENDS

 

It’s the way you tell it

Is 10 per cent alarmingly high or surprisingly small? It depends on where you’re coming from …

The British government has come under a lot of criticism for raising the ceiling for university fees from £3,000 per year to £9,000 from 2012.

So when the latest statistics showed a reduction in applications for next year’s entry, the headlines were predictable. “University applications see record drop as fee hikes bite,” trumpeted the Daily Mirror. The papers were unanimous, with words such as “plummeted”, “record lows”, slump” and “major fall”. And they all linked the 10 per cent decline in applications to the rise in fees. The “devastating” impact of the increased fees is a fixed part of the newspapers’ familiar narrative, and they were not going to deviate from that line now.

Then came a report on a different survey, commissioned by the BBC and published on the same day. This came up with the same rounded figure of 10 per cent. But the BBC said the survey of more than 1,000 youngsters concluded that “…only one in 10 are being put off applying for university by higher tuition fees…”.

Note that little word“only”, justified perhaps by a general expectation that the figure would be much higher. Suddenly we are in the realm of a moderate adjustment in university attendance, rather than the devastation presented by the newspapers.

Ten per cent is either a lot or a little. It all depends on how you present it.

Oliver Wates, MediaTrain

Tender Care

 

Much of our work at MediaTrain involves responding to Invitations to Tender, or Requests for Proposals. If you ‘re considering putting together a tender invitation, you may like to consider the following suggestions, which should apply whether you are looking for a service or a product.

 

1. Make it clear up-front what it is you are looking for. Many tender documents bury the essential details in a mound of contract conditions and internal arrangements. A brief but clear summary at the beginning of what you need and why would help.

2. Keep it short. The longer the document, the greater the chance of confusion.

3. Background is essential, but not a full-blown history. If you were buying a part for your car, you wouldn’t need to know the family history of the man that made it. Make the background relevant only to what you need.

4. Be honest. Some tender invitations look suspiciously like going through the motions. A preferred supplier may have been identified already. Clues are that the invitation is issued very close to a deadline, or that the tender documentation is very precise, perhaps cut and pasted from the favoured supplier’s own proposal. Tenders need to be fair, but it should be possible to say that some preparatory work has already been done by a third party, or that another supplier has done similar work in the past.

5. Provide a contact who is actually available. Getting an automated response saying that someone is on leave is very off-putting. State your working hours, including which days constitute your weekend.

6. Highlight clearly any specific requirement that is absolutely essential. “A supplier that does not have ISO9000 certification should not apply,” or somesuch.

7. Provide clear instructions on how an application should be submitted. If it is electronic, provide more than one email address in the event of communications problems. If you must have hard copies delivered by post (and please try to avoid that), give a full address – and give plenty of time for the post to reach you. International couriers take their time, and often don’t collect or deliver at weekends – but they are still expensive.

8. If technical and financial details must be kept separate, and delivered to separate addresses, highlight that.

9. Acknowledge receipt of a tender application. An email response, even to hard copy submissions, takes a few moments, and is simple courtesy: a supplier has taken the trouble to make an offer – saying it’s arrived is a cost-free way of saying thank you.

10. Advise the losers as well as the winner. A simple note to say thanks but no thanks means that a decent supplier will consider your requirements next time – and may even keep the price down.

11. Provide feedback. Take a few moments to indicate why a bid was successful or unsuccessful. If the price was too high, indicate whether it was near to the winning bid – you don’t have to give details. If the rejection was caused by other factors, try to say briefly what they were. In the unlikely event that a supplier comes back to you to complain, you can cross them off your list for the future. If they take on board what you say, they may make you a better offer next time.

 

Putting together a tender invitation is always a chore. By making the result clearer, you can save yourself the trouble of handling queries or issuing clarifications. And if you take the trouble to acknowledge each bid and provide feedback, your potential suppliers will be very grateful – and respond better next time.

 

Thank you.

 

Jeremy Toye, MediaTrain

Unspeakable

“Interfacing with targeted persons to leverage message potential and facilitate successful outcomes.”

Does this title grab you? Thought not. What does it mean in plain language?

“Communicating well to get results.”

In our working lives we use the language of our profession. At lunch with a colleague, a banker might say: “Unless the MFC expands quantitative easing there’s no bottom to the downside risks for the macro-lending sector.” And his companion would understand him because he too uses Bank-speak.

But when they get home, tired and harried, what would those bankers say when asked, “how was your day at the office?”

“A nightmare! The banks will go bust unless cash is pumped into the market. I need a drink.”

Communication requires the speaker and the audience to be using the same language.

To communicate successfully, whether you are in banking, development, the corporate sector or the aid world, you need to de-code your language. Shift it out of the workplace and into ordinary life. The key thing that matters is to be understood.

Rebellious types in the aid world play a game which shows how often jargon is used where simpler language works better. Let’s call it Jargon Bingo.

The organiser hands out cards containing a selection of five or ten current buzzwords and catchphrases before an event. The first player to tick off five shouts “Jargon Bingo” and wins.

Here’s a list of some current words and phrases. Turn them into the language of the street or the café, and you’ll be communicating better.

1)      Gender mainstreaming

2)      Vertical transmission

3)      Employment opportunities

4)      General population

5)      Risk vector

6)      Facilitate

7)      Environmental factors

8)      Lactating women

9)      Beneficiaries

10)  Civil society

11)  Mortality

12)  Collateral damage

13)  Friendly fire

14)  Holistic approach

With kind regards (and what does that mean?)

Andy Hill, MediaTrain

It doesn’t add up

“Two-thirds of the 16 stores have closed,” said the marketing analyst. Wait a minute, two-thirds of 16 means that two-thirds of one of the stores has closed – that can’t be right.

“More than nine out of ten people support this,” said another. More than nine just has to be ten – does she mean everyone?

Yes, it is very pedantic to pick up on such miniscule things – but it seems difficult for some of us to resist mentally checking a stated set of statistics. “Forty per cent are in favour, 38 per cent against and 20 per cent undecided.” Did you check the arithmetic?

The point is that while the more pedantic of us are running our mental calculators, we’re not listening to what you are really saying. Add to that the claim that 80 per cent of people don’t understand percentages, and you’re missing an incalculable portion of your target audience.

Surely more than nine out of 10 of you would agree that’s not good…

Jeremy Toye

MediaTrain Ltd

Child’s Play

Worries that some children in Britain haven’t learned to recognise written words by the age of six have led the government to come up with a scheme to test their skills.

Except that the kids won’t be “tested” – they will be subjected to “decoding assessment.”

It seems that education officials are now very wary of the word “test.” They’ve been accused of imposing too many tests, so the kids will instead be subjected to a “decoding assessment”, this time on their understanding of “phonics.” Phonics, as an interviewer helpfully reminded his audience, is teaching that the letters D-O-G spells and sounds like Dog.

Children who pass the phonics test (sorry) may not have too much trouble with the letters T-E-S-T. But they, like us, might struggle with D-E-C-O-D.. etc.

Using the language of six-year-olds to explain what we do might be going too far – but could it be worse than the phrases dreamed up by some adults? After all, The Cat Sat on the Mat says it all, really.

Jeremy Toye, MediaTrain. 

The Perpendicular Pronoun

It’s hard to beat the power of personal experience as a factor to convince a television audience.

The redoubtable British businesswoman Nicola Horlick used it to great effect recently in a BBC debate on the government’s proposed changes to government employee pensions. The argument over whether the current system was actually affordable or not had been heated, with some speakers saying it was, and other saying it wasn’t. Then Horlick intervened.

“I’ve worked in the pension fund industry for 28 years and I’ve managed local authority pensions as well as private pension funds and I’m telling you now it’s not sustainable or affordable…” she said.

That just about ended the argument, which swiftly took another direction. Quite apart from common politeness, it would have been very hard for any other speaker – apart from another investment fund manager with similar experience – to contradict her. She had established unbeatable credentials.

For extra impact, Horlick moved to disarm any idea that her comment might have been motivated by subjective factors, adding: “… and I’m saying that as someone who is not a politician, not partisan, not political, but having been in the industry for a long time.”

So if you have first-hand experience which can convince an audience, even in an uncontested context, don’t be shy about using it.

“I spent two weeks in the famine zone last month, and I can assure you that food stocks are almost exhausted.”

“I’ve spent more than 15 years in African agricultural research, and I believe this to be the most exciting development for at least a decade.”

“I’ve spent most of my career in Ruritanian banking and I’ve never know the sector so pessimistic about the prospects.”

No one’s going to say, or even think: “No you didn’t”, the natural inclination is to be convinced by your special experience, and thus your special right to pronounce on the subject.

“I”– or “the perpendicular pronoun”, as it was memorably described in the British comedy series “Yes, Prime Minister” – is a powerful tool.

Oliver Wates, MediaTrain 

On the Record – Out of a Job?

Many seasoned aid workers tell stories to each other that would make the hair of the donor public stand on end.

Just this week I’ve been made aware, privately, and by angry people, of a novel method of growing food in hungry Turkana that isn’t getting any official government support, the looting of the equivalent of 40 truck loads of grain in Mogadishu port – it’s now in private warehouses – and an intolerable delay unloading a ship full of relief grain in Mombasa. That grain was harvested and bagged in America ten months ago and won’t reach beneficiaries for another two months. That’s a full year from the day it was harvested.

I believe this information to be true. Each example, and there are many, many more, has News Story written all over it.

But my sources won’t be identified by title, organization or name. They are too worried to tell the media what they know because they fear their disclosure will a) compromise their organisation b) impede its work and harm beneficiaries and c) get them fired.

And all three fears are probably founded, especially if the information can be traced back to them or their organization.

So what to do when you know that something is going on that deserves to be in the public domain but you don’t want to be identified as the source?

First and foremost, you need someone in the media that you can trust, and you get that from dealing with the media in the past and seeing them as a potential ally or honest broker.

If you trust a journalist, then a story can be run quoting “aid sources” or “port sources” or “sources close to the relief operation.”

You can agree on a formulation with the journalist. And it’s the journalist’s job to check the information as well as it can be checked, and, if possible, to get official comment on it.

Often journalists will ring up a government spokesman to get comment on such stories because it allows the media to “lead with the denial” , as it is called, but carry the information in the story all the same.

Such as in:

A Kenyan government spokesman denied there were any delays in handling grain destined for the emergency in the horn of Africa, where 13 million people face starvation.

“I am not aware of any delays. The port is operating normally,” a government spokesman said.

He was commenting on reports by aid sources that a ship full of relief grain, the MV Feedtheworld, had been docked in Mombasa for two months with an undischarged cargo of American PL480 relief wheat.

The sources said the grain was harvested and bagged in America in October 2010 and shipped from Louisiana in March this year, arriving in Mombasa in early July.

But it was still waiting to be unloaded on Friday, the sources said. The reason was not clear but it appeared to be a dispute between the port authority and dock workers.

Risky? Maybe, but there are so many sources that could have been the origin of this information that you are likely to be protected.

The result: the story is out there, the public will want to know why and, with a little luck, the grain will start moving to those in need.

Andy Hill, MediaTrain Nairobi

Good News – for a Change

Famine, disaster, death, disease, hunger, malnutrition, starvation. These are words that appear in the first 50 words of most news stories today on the current Horn of Africa disaster – please don’t call it a food emergency.That’s an unexpected group of six for dinner or something you get from eating suspect food or drinking bad water.

They are appropriate words, given the scale of human suffering, and they are emotive words to kindle compassion, and donations. They play on our sense of humanity on which relief depends.

Aid agencies MediaTrain works with complain often that “the news is always bad” and focuses on the negatives.

But without the bad news there wouldn’t be much momentum towards change for the better, or funds flowing into humanitarian bank accounts to alleviate the suffering.

So now the public, and donor governments, deserve to know that their money is, life-saving, timely, a godsend, effective, all words which convey a sense of stepping back from the brink and restoring humanity to those in danger of losing it.

Now’s the time for aid agencies to start telling stories about those who made it and are on the mend, possibly even heading home; of volunteers saved from famine who are now teaching or helping as volunteers in the camps.

It’s time to show that it’s not all gloom and doom, and that in the 21^st century the humanitarian response is equal to the disaster facing it.

If it’s not, then that is a bad news story.

Andy Hill, MediaTrain, Nairobi

Credit Where It’s Due

Describing a first shipment of supplies into beleaguered Tripoli, the UN’s World Food Programme spokesman said they had sent in thousands of bottles of water by ship “on behalf of UNICEF.”

WFP insiders might smile ruefully as UNICEF’s name gets in on the act (rivalry between UN agencies being what it is) but recognising another aid agency’s contribution sounded generous and inclusive.

The same spokesperson might have been tempted to explain why UNICEF, the children’s agency should be responsible for supplying water, but he didn’t. Neither did he give a list of all the other aid organisations involved in the relief effort. Explanations take time and can get too detailed. Lists fog the mind, turning speaking into droning, and lively text into phonebooks. A roadside billboard on the UN’s fight against HIV/Aids listed 11 agencies involved – true but confusing, especially from a speeding car.

Explanations are sometimes essential. WFP for example constantly has to explain why airdrops of food are rarely the most efficient means of delivery, even if they do look more dramatic than a fleet of trucks.

But keeping to the action and giving credit to a partner often makes an appealing combination.

Jeremy Toye, MediaTrain