Creating A Communications Plan for Sponsoring Campus-Community Events.

Racial Legacies and Learning is providing many opportunities to generate media coverage about the benefits of campus diversity work and to highlight the many ways that campuses and communities are learning together about racial issues and opportunities in American society. The following general guidelines are designed to help campus and community leaders develop communications plans for their events.

A communications plan should include:

Goals
Your goals for media coverage may include some or all of the following:

• Turning out the campus and the surrounding community for an event(s);
• Generating spot-news coverage of the campus-community dialogue;
• Generating feature stories about diversity on your campus or on campuses in your community;
• Underscoring for the public your institution's and your president's commitment to diversity; and
• Generating editorial support for the crucial role higher education is playing in addressing racial legacies.

Target Audience (s)
Your target audience may include some or all of the groups listed here or others:

• Faculty, staff, and administrators on campus;
• Organized student groups that represent the diversity of your campus;
• Community opinion leaders including elected officials and leaders from the religious, business, education, civil rights, and other sectors; and
• Members of ethnic groups or other minorities from your community.

Target Media
Your media outreach work will cause you to target many types of media. They might include:

• Campus media outlets including student newspapers, student radio, faculty newsletters, college-run cable stations, alumni magazines;
• State and local mainstream newspapers;
• Local community, ethnic, foreign language and specialty newspapers;
• Wire services;
• Magazines;
• Local radio and television talk, public affairs, and news programs.

Messages
Your plan should clarify the two or three messages you want to convey through your project events. They might be something like the following:

• (Your campus) is taking the lead in bringing together the community to address the impact of discrimination in our society;
• Higher education has a critical role to play in addressing racial legacies and divisions;
• These dialogues can be difficult, but the kinds of conflict they bring can ultimately have a positive outcome; and
• We have brighter futures as individuals, as a community, and as a nation when we engage in these dialogues.

Timeline
Your plan should include a timeline for media outreach, listing what kinds of media materials will be issued in each month and what follow-up will be conducted. For instance, if your event were set for October 6, 1998, these are just a few of the elements that might be included in your timeline:

• Early August: Meet with the publisher, editorial writers, and news directors to discuss the events and how they might generate coverage.
• Late August: Issue calendar announcements to all mainstream, community, ethnic, and specialty newspapers. Follow up by phone or with meetings to place announcements in weekly publications.
• Early September: Begin working with panelists/speakers on op-ed pieces for placement the week of the event.
• Mid September: Issue media advisory announcing event.
• Late September: Pitch calls to all target media to generate pre-publicity.