The P Process, which the Johns Hopkins Center for Communication Programs applies in communication projects worldwide, is a useful approach for planning and carrying out communication activities systematically (55) (see illustration below). The P Process was designed for communication projects that address audiences directly, whether the general public, family planning clients, or other groups. Still, the approach also can help organizations working with journalists by making news media relations activities more systematic, focused, and responsive to feedback.

The P Process for systematically planning and
carrying out a communication project can
apply to working with the news media.

Each of the steps of the P Process can be adapted to working with the news media:

1. Analysis. An assessment of the status of the news media and their audiences provides basic information about the news media's ability to help an organization reach its communication objectives. Analysis of coverage in the news media reveals the frequency, accuracy, and quality of reporting on family planning, reproductive health, population, and related topics. Analysis helps organizations learn how the news media, policymakers, and the public view the organization and the issues it deals with.

Needs assessment can identify the subjects that interest journalists and the barriers to effective reporting. In Bangladesh, for example, a 1992 assessment of journalists' needs involved in-depth interviews with key editors, reporters, and family planning public information officers and focus-group discussions with rural journalists. The assessment found that journalists were interested in family planning and population issues and thought them important but had limited access to information sources and assistance in covering these topics (34).

2. Strategic Design. A family planning program should decide on the key communication objectives that it seeks to achieve in working with the news media—for example, whether to inform the country's leaders about the importance of reproductive health for the nation, to combat false public rumors, to promote informed choice of methods, or another purpose (76). The more specific the objectives of a news media relations strategy, the better its activities can be focused (19).

Programs then should determine the message themes that can best achieve the objectives. Such planning helps ensure that the right materials go to the right people at the right place at the right time (19).

3. Development, pretesting, and production. This step involves pretesting specific messages and materials with the intended audience and revising as indicated to make them more effective. Pretesting obviously is difficult when journalists are the audience, and inappropriate with fast-breaking news stories. Nevertheless, whenever possible, people with experience as journalists should review media relations materials or activities for newsworthiness and effectiveness of proposed formats, writing style, and tone.

4. Management, implementation, and monitoring. Contacting journalists, developing newsworthy ideas and materials, creating events that interest journalists, distributing news releases, preparing useful background information, responding to requests for information, and setting up interviews are among the main activities used to carry out a news media relations strategy.

Monitoring the outcome of news media relations activities helps programs to compare accomplishments with objectives and to revise the strategy or its implementation. Setting up a systematic and continual means of studying the news media, primarily by clipping, or cutting, newspaper articles and monitoring newscasts, will help the organization follow the news and see opportunities for obtaining coverage as well as measure results.

5. Impact evaluation. In this stage organizations can review the impact of the news media relations program and apply the lessons learned to planning further activities. In addition to review of clippings, one approach is to survey journalists, policymakers, or the public formally or informally. What story ideas have been used? How accurate have stories been? While it may be difficult to attribute changes directly to news media relations, such evaluation helps to link these activities both to changes in news coverage and to the effects of that coverage on public opinion and knowledge.

Planning for continuity. News media relations, like communication in general, is a process. Building good working relationships takes time, and getting results takes persistent effort. Individual journalists come and go, programs change, and new needs arise. Throughout, the public demand for news andinformation persists. A professional approach, high standards, and commitment to the public interest, applied consistently over time, can help an organization meet its communication goals and advance the cause of family planning and good reproductive health.