How to engage the media

Here are the steps that the National Alliance to End Homelessness recommends you take when you release your PIT Count Data

1. Send out a press release announcing a decline or increase in homelessness in your community, and connecting this to current policy asks.
2. Contact your local paper and propose an op-ed to run at the same time as any story featuring your community’s PIT Count data.
3. If you’re unable to secure an op-ed, write a letter to the editor in response to the story.
4. Use your own communications channels (website, social media, blog, etc.) to amplify and expand on the op-ed or letter to the editor. Make sure you target your member of Congress by emailing his or her communications and housing staffers and tweeting @hisorherhandle about the op-ed or letter to the editor.
5. If you’re unable to get an op-ed or letter to the editor published, you always have your own channels. Run a blog post, tweet about it, etc. and make sure your member of Congress knows about it.

See who you should contact in the media and how.