How the National News Media Alliance uses VoterVoice to ensure a more favorable legislative and regulatory environment for the digital distribution of news content.
The news media industry hasn’t always been the most tech-forward. But as it adapts and transforms, new threats and opportunities arise from the fast-developing tech world, particularly from the rise of giants such as Google and Facebook.
Enter the 2019 Journalism Competition and Preservation Act, which aims to create a temporary safe harbor for news publishers to band together and negotiate with online platforms on the terms to access their online content. This proposed legislation is one of the top issues for the National News Media Alliance, which represents about 2,000 news publishers of all sizes and focuses, primarily in the United States with some international participation as well.
The organization maintains the Journalism Competition and Preservation Act would help build better partnerships between news publishers and tech platforms and create a more favorable legislative and regulatory environment for the digital distribution of news content.
Grassroots Advocacy Focus
As Senior Vice President and General Counsel, Danielle Coffey has been leading the organization’s advocacy strategy since 2015. With VoterVoice a vital component in her toolkit, Coffey has been successful in engaging the News Media Alliance’s members to advocate for the passing of this bill.
“During the August recess in 2019, we included the VoterVoice link in all of our distributions to our membership, to say, ‘reach out to your member of Congress while they’re home and encourage them to come back to D.C. and support our bill.’ And we had a massive response,” Coffey says.
One of the main tactics the News Media Alliance uses is personalizing the communications and conveying the urgency of their message by styling some of the emails as a letter from the organization’s President and CEO David Chavern. “So it looks like it’s an email from him individually to each member,” she says.
But she also credits the positive campaign response to VoterVoice’s easy-to-use platform. She uploaded the organizations’ thousands of publishers into the tool and quickly created a campaign where advocates only have to input their address and VoterVoice will match them with the correct member of Congress. “Most will personalize their message and then hit send,” Coffey added.
Additionally, NMA arms its supporters with talking points as part of the association’s VoterVoice action center. This helps advocates understand the urgency of the campaign and customize the message to make it their own.
“It just makes it so easy because it is so user-friendly on the publisher side,” she says. “This made it easy for our members to take action and easy for me to use.”
Small Team, Big Results
The News Media Alliance’s internal advocacy team is basically Coffey and Chavern, with assistance from Communications Director Lindsey Loving. Having a tool that simplifies the process of communicating and engaging with the organization’s more than 2,000 members is vital.
Coffey says that periodically, the News Media Alliance reassesses their tech stack and VoterVoice is one she never considers doing away with. “I’m okay if I maybe miss out on an article because I no longer use a particular software but nobody else does grassroots the way VoterVoice does it,” she adds.
Digital Advocacy Done Right with VoterVoice
As the world grapples with the COVID-19 global pandemic and remote work continues to be the norm, digital advocacy has become key for advocacy professionals. VoterVoice helps mobilize your supporters to act from the comfort of their own home, using the platform of their liking — be it email, social media, phone, text.
From scheduling and personalizing messages to your advocates and setting up campaigns quickly, to having real-time data on your campaigns to optimize as you go, VoterVoice provides all the digital advocacy tools you need to mobilize your advocates.
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