Staying on Top with Media Monitoring  

Regular media monitoring is a useful way to track who is saying what about your organization and the issues that are important to your work and can help you lead a more informed communications program. This month, Spitfire Recommends brings you quick tips and resources for tracking media coverage without paying for a clipping service.

Media tracking is valuable for a number of reasons. Staying on top of the coverage enables you to issue quick responses to news stories in order to reinforce positive coverage, counter a misconception or weigh in with a new angle. This can be done through contacting a journalist or submitting a letter to the editor or op-ed.

In addition to helping you identify opportunities to respond, tracking media coverage can help you tailor media outreach to fit into the context of broader national debates. This is especially useful when you are considering joining an ongoing debate. Check to see how many articles have appeared in recent weeks and how the debate has evolved during that time. You will want to know what sides of the issue have already been discussed, what has been left out, and how the media have followed the issue overall. For example, if you work on poverty issues, you could look at how the hurricanes are affecting positions that policy makers are taking on federal assistance to the poor. Citing the recent trends, you can offer a well-informed perspective and a fresh angle to the next journalist you speak with.

Before you begin media outreach, it is also good to perform a quick media search to make sure the same journalist you are about to call did not file a story using the same angle last week.

Following are several free, easy-to-use resources available on the Internet for tracking media coverage:

• LexisNexis U.S. Politics and World News. This new offering from LexisNexis allows non-subscribers to search hundreds of free stories on current events ranging from health care to Social Security to civil rights. In addition to article searches, visitors can browse transcripts of national television news programs such as ABC News, CBS News, NBC News and CNN.

• Google News and Yahoo News. Google News and Yahoo News gather stories from thousands of sources worldwide and automatically arrange them to present the most relevant news first. Use search terms to find the item that interests you then go directly to the site which published the article you want to read. These two Web sites are great for tracking day-to-day coverage, but not useful for finding older articles.

• Google News Alerts and Yahoo News Alerts.  Both Google News and Yahoo News offer news alerts, which are summaries and links to news articles on the topics of your choice delivered directly to your inbox. Sign up to have the latest news emailed to you daily, weekly or as it happens.