2. Writing Letters to the Editor and Op-Eds

3. Agenda
What is a LTE
Making your LTE EPIC
Let’s write a LTE!
The Op-Ed
How to get Published
You’re published, now what?

4. Letters to the editor

5. What is a LTE? Letter to the Editor
word letter with a single main point
Has a single author
A clear and concise message about a problem
A Letter to the Editor (LTE) is a brief statement expressing your opinion, generally in response to current events or a recently published article. While news reporting is supposed to be objective, LTEs are a chance to talk about an issue that’s important to you and what can or should be done about it.
LTEs always have a single author, and really are about being as clear and concise as possible. These are some of the shortest pieces you could write and have published, but that doesn’t mean you don’t have to put in time to write it. Today we’ll dive in and leave with a working draft to write our first LTEs.

6. Why write a LTE? Generates coverage Amplify our voice
Decision makers care
Why Letters to the Editor?
Letters to the editor are quick to write, relatively easy to have published, and appear in the most widely read section of the paper: the editorial page. Politicians and government agencies routinely clip and circulate letters to the editor as an indicator of what is important to their constituents. Voicing your opinion through LTEs help your elected officials understand the importance and urgency of issues hat may not typically be front of mind for their offices.
You might be wondering why a word essay matters to policymakers. Letters to the editor are printed in newspapers or posted to the websites of news outlets. This serves a dual purpose. For one, it gives you a public forum to share your opinion. This means that other readers, ideally constituents of your target, will see your views, making the points known and possibly compelling some to action.
A published LTE will also be seen by the decision maker’s staff. Legislative staff or interns often times are looking for published pieces that mention their staff. Since this is put out in the public, your words may be perceived as affecting their image. Therefore, when you publish a LTE, a decision maker cares and will pay attention. This is most powerful if you’re a constituent in their community.

7. Making your LTE EPIC

8. Keep your LTE EPIC
Frame your letter in the EPIC format: Engage audience
We always want to make sure our LTEs follow EPIC. It’s an acronym based on four key components. The first of these components is to Engage the audience:
Try to respond to a recent news article, relate the issues to your local community, or personalize it with your own experience. The goal is to catch your audience’s attention and get them to keep reading.
To engage our audience, we want to develop a “Hook” that ties the content of your letter to something that is relevant to a wider audience.

9. Keep your LTE EPIC
Frame your letter in the EPIC format: Problem statement
In the problem statement, you summarize the key issue you want to address in your letter. This should be very brief (trying for one sentence), and ideally ties your hook to the bigger issue at hand.

10. Keep your LTE EPIC
Frame your letter in the EPIC format: Inform on solution
Informing on the solution is really important. Since you’ve laid out a problem, you want to share PIH Engage’s solution to the problem. This might be a funding amount for a program, a bill that needs to be passed, or a commitment we need from your legislator. You will want to write this in 1-2 sentences.

11. Keep your LTE EPIC
Frame your letter in the EPIC format: Call to action
A call to action is our chance to show lawmakers that their constituents are interested, and put pressure on them to take action. You can form this as a question or a statement, either saying that “Representative X must act now by supporting [the solution],” or asking “will Representative X stand up against [the problem] by supporting [the solution]?”
You can also frame this as a call to action for your readers. You want it to be a yes or no question, such as “will you call Representative X and ask them to vote for Y?”

12. Is your LTE EPIC? Engage audience Problem statement Inform on solution
Call to action
Just remember that any time we write a LTE, we want it to be EPIC. As a quick rule, read any LTE you write and try to identify these four components, if you can’t, you may need to rework the LTE.
Follow this structure, and you’ll be one step closer to publishing. Let’s put this to practice today.

13. Let’s write a LTE!

14. Let’s Write! What Publication? What are their rules? Think local
Relationship to target
What are their rules?
Length
Article Requirements
Author Requirements
When do they publish?
Facilitator Note: Pass out the LTE Worksheet if you haven’t already, and background 1 page documents on PIH Engage’s Advocacy priorities, found at
Right now we’re going to take some time to write out our own draft Letters to the Editor. Using the LTE Worksheet, we’ll go through and answer each question. In the end we should all have the key components for our LTE written out.
What publication do you want to publish your piece in? Locally, we have many newspapers that we can choose from. We want to write a publication based on where we live now for two reasons. One, most newspapers prefer to publish local voices. Two, our target is always a person for advocacy. Since we’re targeting our lawmakers with our letters to the editor, we want to make sure that we publish the letter in their district.
Once you figure out which paper you want to send it to, write it down under question 1.
What are the rules of the publication? Each editorial board has their own rules for publishing letters to the editor.
One requirement is length: typically the length of a letter to the editor is between 100 and 300 words, but some smaller papers may allow up to 400. How many words can a letter have at the publication you wrote in for question 1?
Some newspapers (like the New York Times) actually require a specific type of hook. You must write a letter to the editor in response to a published article. This means you have to do some more research for articles published in the last month or so. Does your paper have this requirement?
Papers often have author requirements. This is usually just stated as things you have to include while publishing. Many times this means the name of the author, such as “Sheena Wood” not “PIH Engage.” They often ask you for your hometown or address, phone number, and address. These are usually just to verify your existence. Sometimes, though rare, they will ask for your affiliation.
Please feel free to list your title with our team, and our PIH Engage team name. For example: “John Smith, Team Coordinator, PIH Engage Anchorage.”
Finally, when does the newspaper publish letters? This is a good note to have so you know when to expect it in print. Many papers will NOT tell you when they print your letter, so knowing the day they publish will make it much easier to track your progress and follow up with them.
Facilitator Note: Pause to let your team fill in this information – it could take a moment or two to look up some of it, so please feel free to assist by exiting the PowerPoint and searching the internet. A helpful tool is RESULTS’ Media tools:

15. Let’s Write! What’s the problem? What’s the solution?
One sentence summary
Be clear
Think big picture
What’s the solution?
Use the rationale for our advocacy asks
Write the ask(s) in 1-2 sentences
Facilitator Note: If you haven’t already, hand out PIH Engage advocacy one-pagers related to the problem you want to write about. They can be found at engage.pih.org/advocacy.
What’s the problem? When we’re writing LTEs as PIH Engage team members, we want to bring up the problems our advocacy campaign is aimed at. In one (or two) sentence(s), we want to summarize what the issue is that we’re writing about. This is a good chance to lay down an important statistic or figure that emphasizes the problem.
Take a moment now and write out the problem that you’d like to address, based on the background materials.
On the flip side of the same coin, we need to write out the answer to: What’s the solution? We want to inform on the solutions that we have. Based on the background information and fact sheets on each of PIH Engage’s advocacy asks, we can pull a key sentence or two from these to inform on the solution that makes sense for our campaign.
Let’s go ahead and take 5 minutes to finish up our problem statement, and write down a solution statement.
Facilitator Note: Take a 5 minute pause here, be sure to answer any questions that come up about the problem or the solution.

16. Let’s Write! Call to Action What’s the hook? Name the target
Ask voters for something
Ask target for something
What’s the hook?
Respond to an article
Respond to current events
Be the hook
A call to action is the most important aspect of the letter. This is the point where we actually ask for a change to be made. We always want to name our target in our call to action. Decision makers often see letters that publish their names, and that’s exactly what we want to happen.
We can do two types of calls to action. One type is to ask voters to do something, like “call Senator X” or “write a letter to Representative Y.” The other type is to ask the target for something, like “Senator X, vote for global health, vote for Senate Bill Y.” Either one is a good way to work in the name of your target, and both could potentially get a response.
What’s the hook? Whether your newspaper requires you to relate letters to an article or not, a hook is really important to get your letter published. Figure out what your hook will be, whether that’s a previously written article, another LTE, responding to a current event, or relating the global health issue back to local health. Alternatively, you can also be the hook, by telling a short (2-3 sentences MAX) personal story that relates to the problem.
Let’s take a couple of minutes to write out our call to action and our hook.
Facilitator Note: Take 2-3 minutes to let your team write out their one sentence call to action and the hook. Have a few people share their hooks when people look like they’re wrapping up – it will inspire others in the group.

17. Putting it all together
Begin with your hook
Add your problem
Add solutions
Add the call to action
Check for flow and rules
Submit your letter
Now we get to put it all together. Remember our EPIC format? The worksheet we just filled out will give us each of the pieces we need.
We’ll use the back of the worksheet, or your computer, to write out a quick rough draft. Start with the hook, putting it on top of the sheet – remember that we want this to be Engaging, so make sure that it’s written in an interesting way, and short as well. Next add the 1-2 sentences about the problem. This should be pretty straightforward.
Add a connecting statement to put your solutions in. For example, after the problem, you can begin a sentence with “However,” and follow that with a sentence about the solution you’re proposing. Finally, end with the call to action as you wrote it on the front side of the worksheet.
Did it work? Make sure that you can read through your draft clearly, then make sure that it matches the newspaper’s rules. Check the length, check spelling, check grammar. If it all looks good – submit your letter!
Facilitator Note: If this is your team’s first time submitting letters to the editor, send it to your team’s coach and before sending it in to a newspaper. If you’ve submitted before – send it off to the paper, and let PIH Engage staff know when it is published.

18. The Op-Ed

19. What is an Op-Ed? Opposite of editorial Opinion pieces
Longer than LTEs
Op-ed stands for “opposite of editorial,” which means in a print newspaper, op-eds will appear on the page facing the editorial page. The editorial page is where the newspaper makes its opinion known, often to endorse political candidates or specific sides of issues. News reporting is supposed to be objective, omitting opinions, but the editorial and op-ed pages are the one place in the news (especially print newspapers) where opinions of both the news source and community members are published.
Op eds are usually a longer piece than a LTE, ranging more in the word range. Because of this, Op-Eds can and should include more details, supporting data, and even counter-opinions.

20. Op-Ed Basic Structure Very Similar to LTEs Start with a hook!
Need a thesis
Arguments
“To be sure…”
Kicker/Conclusion
Facilitator Note: If you have time (about 5 minutes) to break down an Op Ed, do so with these slide notes. If not – see the short explanation later on in the notes.
Long:
Op-Eds have a similar structure to LTEs, but are a bit longer and more drawn out. If you started with an LTE, and wanted to expand on it, you definitely could. Let’s start with the basic structure and compare them a bit side by side.
First you have a hook – that’s exactly the same as a LTE. You want to draw in your audience. But remember you have a bit more space, so make this more interesting. A hook that disagrees boldly with an editorial or another opinion piece could be a great way to start.
Then you need a thesis, or a single sentence that states your problem and sets you up for your argument. Basically answer the question: What is the point? The closer you can work your thesis in to the beginning of your piece, the better. Often times editors like to know exactly what they’re going to read about within the first few seconds of reading your piece. Your problem statement from an LTE might be the most similar piece to the thesis.
After your thesis, you can dive into your arguments. Here you can break down the argument for two things, 1 – why the problem/thesis matters so much, and 2 – what solutions could exist for a problem. We can highlight key points of a given bill or funding level for global health, or we can break down the negative effects of global health funding cuts. The argument section can be thought of as 3 paragraphs, each with a main point, 2 sentences of evidence, and a 1 sentence conclusion that ties your main point back to your thesis.
Then there’s the “to be sure” paragraph. This is one thing LTEs don’t leave enough room for, and it’s a chance to address any counter-opinions that might exist. For global health funding, many times we might want to make our “to be sure” paragraph about how there are important health inequities that need to be fixed within the U.S. as well. Be sure to provide a counter point to whatever piece of evidence you use for your “to be sure” point. You want to make sure the reader knows that you’ve thought about the issue, have figured out the biggest counter-argument, and have thought through it’s implications.
Finally is our kicker/conclusion. This is where you get to work in a call to action, much like in a LTE. You want to be a little creative here, circle back to your hook, and make it a little pithy. Readers will hold on to the point made in your conclusion, so you want it to be catchy and really relevant to the hook you began your piece with, while also capturing your main call to action.
Short:
The main components of an Op-Ed are very similar to that of a LTE. You

21. How to get published
There are a few key aspects of publishing a LTE or Op-Ed that have almost nothing to do with what you write. Here we’ll explore tips on how to get your piece published when you submit it.

22. Timing Relevancy Newsworthy Big national events Days of publication
Timing is key to getting your letter published. Sometimes LTEs and Op-Eds can be published, even without a relevant and timely hook (you can be your own hook, for instance), but they’re far more likely to be published if you relate your piece back to a relevant story or event that is ongoing. Over the past year PIH Engage members have published letters and Op-Eds around the 2016 U.S. budget proposal, World AIDS Day (December 1), and even Thanksgiving.
By developing a hook that is timely, your piece is much more likely to be published. Another aspect of timing that is important is the day of publication. If a newspaper publishes LTEs and Op-Eds on a certain day of the week (say Tuesday), it is important to finish your piece and submit it at least 2 days in advance. This gives you time to call in and follow up the next day, before it gets published.
Ex: Zika article in NYT – diverting funding – timely, responsive, connected to current events (olympics and outbreak)

23. Audience Who do you want your piece to reach?
Tailoring your LTE or your op-ed to a certain audience is your best shot. Think about who you are trying to reach- your community, your representative, your school. Once you’ve thought through this part of your writing, start tailoring the stories and the call to action. Ask yourself questions such as:
What is the best way to reach college students/my representative/ the larger community?
How can I make sure that they will read this?
What is my call to action for my target audience?
Another audience that is important is the newspaper’s audience. If this is a really local-based paper, having local context in your hook could appeal to the editors. Remember, newspapers make money by keeping their customers engaged in what gets printed.

24. Follow Up! If you don’t get a confirmation If you don’t get published
If you do get published
Following up with the newspaper is your best bet to get published. You should always follow up a day or two after submitting your piece, especially if there’s no reply to confirm your receipt. A phone call is best for follow up, so look for the number for the editor’s desk. Ask simply about the status of your letter. Sometimes just asking will put your letter at the top of their pile and make it more likely to be published.
If you don’t get published after your submission, you should call later in the week and ask about the letter getting into the next edition. They may provide some feedback for you to tweak it, or they may not comment at all on the letter. Many times if you call, this emphasizes the importance of your letter and makes it a bigger priority for review and publication in the next edition.
If you do get published after following up, reach out and thank any staff you spoke with. If they like you, it will be easier to publish in the future. Also – be sure to share your letter with the engage network by posting it to our Facebook group and twitter.

25. You’re published – now what?

26. Promote your Post Once you’re published – share: With engage@pih.org
With your team
On social media, #RighttoHealth
With your target
After your letter get’s published we need to get the word out there. First, we have to send the link to along with your name, title in our team (if you have one), and what team we’re on. Then PIH Engage staff will feature your letter or Op-ed on the “In the News” tab.
Please also share the letter with our team. Send it to me, or put it on our Facebook group. Facilitator Note: If you have a team /google group, make sure to have people this, basically use whatever system works best for you to get the word out to your members.
Tweet out the letter and post it to the PIH Engage facebook page. If you use the #RighttoHealth, hundreds of thousands of people may see it as well – especially if it has a catchy title!
Most Importantly, whenever our team publishes a LTE or Op-Ed – we want to send the publication to our target’s audience. If we write with a call to action for one of our Senators, we want to send their staff a copy so we can ensure that it makes it to their office. This is important either in establishing our relationship with the local office or as a way to maintain that relationship and put more pressur on the office.

27. Media Advocacy Activity: Practice your pitch
Break up into groups and come up with a pitch for a story, think about your hook, core message, ask, audience, and the outlet your pitching to (10 min)
Share your pitches with the room (15 min)
Discuss & vote on the strongest pitch (10 min)

28. Pitfalls for a Pitch The Columbus The Remote Pitch
The Not-Gonna-Happen
The Thesis
The Stereotype
The Fake Trend
Coming up with a good story (and presenting it well) is harder than it seems! Even experienced journalists can fall into some common mistakes when pitching their ideas. Check out these common pitfalls and try to avoid them!
The Columbus
Example: “I heard this new band called U2”
Why Not?  This may be news to you but your discovery has already been discovered.
Instead: Is there anything new that you could bring to this story?  How about finding a local story with a fresh focus.
The Remote Pitch
Example: “I think we should really be covering the conflict in the middle east.”
Why Not? What could you bring to this story from halfway around the world?
Instead: Try finding a local angle on global politics by covering a protest or people who have moved from
The Not-Gonna-Happen
Example: “I wanna do an in depth profile of Beyonce.”
Why Not? You probably don’t have access.
Instead: Maybe there’s some impact her music and celebrity power has had on your community?
The Thesis
Example:“I want report on poverty in America”
Why Not?  This is a better topic for a book than a radio story
Instead: Try to break off a piece of this issue that could be addressed in 4.5 minutes.  How are people accessing a new distribution system for welfare benefits.
The Stereotype
Example: “I wanna do a story about why all boys love sports”
Why Not? That’s based on assumption and not necessarily fact. Also is there something new or surprising that we could learn from the story?
Instead: Look for evidence rather than anecdotes. Maybe the story is about how and why that stereotype persists and whether or not its changing.
The Fake Trend
Example: I’ve been playing a new video game and I think everyone should.
Why Not?  Personal interests can be a good start for a story but they have to connect to actual broader societal trends.
Instead: Research to verify if the trend is real or reframe the story as a first-person commentary.

29. Key Takeaways for LTEs & Op-Eds
Make sure you have a clear hook and message!
What are you responding to?
What ideas or solutions do you want to advance?
Your writing should be…
Positive, personal, and values-based
Assertive and confident as well as credible
You want to…
Think about your audience (target)
Make policy and social justice issues personable (relate)
Combine data with themes and anecdotes (validate)
Hit an emotional point (connect)