Caption: Woman speaking in political context (U.S. Environmental Protection Agency)

So you took the Pro-Truth Pledge yourself and are excited to get your political representatives to take it? Great: let’s talk about how you can do so!

Figure Out Who They Are

The first step to getting your political representatives (whether elected or appointed) to take the pledge is figuring out who they are. It’s not hard to do. Just put into your preferred search engine “contact your political representatives in [country]” without quotation marks and you get a list of websites that help you contact your representatives. If your country’s primary language is not English, use the appropriate language.

For example, this is the link to the search result in Google for contacting representatives in Australia. The first site at the top is this one, giving Australians clear ways of contacting their elected representatives.

It’s even easier if you are in the US. Thanks to the Google Civic Information API, our website developers put together an automatic way for you to learn who are your elected representatives. Just enter your address into the top bar on this page. You will get a menu with (almost) all of your elected representatives, from local to national, and the number of pledge-takers per elected representative.

Once you figure out your elected representatives, use your preferred search engine to figure out if there are any candidates running for the office. Then, you can pitch both the incumbent and all the candidates.

Pitching Your Elected Representatives

After you find your elected representatives, figure out their emails, website contact form, Twitter profile, Facebook page, and other social media, along with phone numbers. They usually have these readily available, with the possible exception of email for more high-profile politicians. You can use this guide on finding emails if their emails are not readily available. Next, follow the directions here, which have a variety of templates for you to pitch politicians and candidates for office.

For the US, it’s even easier once you enter your address on this page. You will see the websites and social media of most of your elected representatives. Do some additional research to figure out their emails and any social media that may not be present there (remember, the Google Civic Information API does not provide complete information). Also, don’t forget to figure out candidates for office.

The best thing about entering your address into this page is that those who have easily-available Twitter accounts will have a blue “Twitter” button above and to the right of their picture. When you click on that button, you will send to each one this message: “I took the #ProTruthPledge at https://ProTruthPledge.org/ because I value #truth and #facts and I ask my representative @ [twitter handle] join me in taking @ProTruthPledge and showing that #TruthMatters and #FactsMatter to them.” Here’s an example of how it looks, and below is a video showing you how to do so.

It takes 5 seconds (literally, not figuratively) to send a tweet to each. So take 5 minutes to tweet to all of them, and repeat the same 5 minute tweeting per week. You can easily set up a Twitter account if you don’t have one. Make your voice heard and make a difference – Tweet for Truth now!

Don’t forget to then go through all the other social media channels, website contact form, email, and phone, using the directions here. Also, don’t forget to contact candidates for office: we find that they – not being career politicians – have a much higher likelihood of taking the pledge.

We know these strategies work: a number of public figures have been convinced to take the pledge through reaching out to them on social media. For example, one of our volunteers has described how whenever anyone invites him to “like” a Facebook page from a politician, he asks whether that individual have taken the pledge. After a couple of exchanges back and forth, where he explains the pledge and follows up, about a quarter end up taking the pledge. Imagine what would happen if a quarter of all the politicians whose Facebook pages you were invited to like end up taking the pledge!

Now, you can also meet and pitch public figures in person. Use the script informed by the email templates, along with this blog on how politicians can get maximum benefit from taking the pledge. We also recommend bringing along the information of all the people who have signed the Pro-Truth Pledge in that politician’s region if it’s a regional politician, or country if it’s a national-level politician, since part of signing the pledge involves calling on one’s elected representatives to sign the pledge. We can make that information available to you if you email info [at] protruthpledge [dot] org outside the US, or you can put in the relevant address into this page to get US data.

Ideally, you would also bring along a PTP sign-up binder with some sample signatures, or at least photos of signatures. The binder provides demonstrable proof that signatures were gathered, while the spreadsheet provides the total number of actual signatures.

Note that politicians – or their staff, who you will likely be talking to if it’s a high-level political figure – will likely want you to leave them with some physical presence of the number of people who signed the PTP. What you can do is print out a photograph of one page of a sign-up sheet, as physical proof of signature-gathering, along with printing out the spreadsheet with all the names of the people who signed the PTP in that region or country. You can then leave it with the politician or their staff, along with a flyer with the text of the PTP.

It’s especially good to approach politicians during a candidate’s forum or listening session, as these are specifically designated times for politicians to meet constituents. There, you can ask them publicly in the Q&A about whether they would be willing to take the pledge, and mention that you contacted them before. If you can get someone to videotape you, it’s especially helpful, as in this video that you can use as a guide.

Then for each public figure you contact, fill out this form, and in the “Any relevant notes,” note that you have contacted this person. That way, we can keep a clear track record of the politicians who are contacted, and circle back around to them later, referencing the first contact. It’s really important and helpful to do so in order to ensure successful pitches, so please do help us out on this one!

Conclusion

These are the strategies that got over 100 politicians to take the pledge, including Member of US Congress Beto O’Rourke, as you can see from this video of him taking the pledge. There’s no magic, just people like you reaching out to their political representatives and making the request. So join us in doing so, and let us know any questions or comments you have about this process below!

Caption: Image of red figure as leader of group (nistdh/Flickr)

Are you excited about the Pro-Truth Pledge (PTP) and interested in starting your own chapter? Awesome! Let’s talk about how to be an area organizer for the PTP.

Goals

All the chapters start from a single seed of a passionate person dedicated to fighting misinformation and post-truth politics. You will be recruiting and coordinating others to ensure the outcomes of the Pro-Truth Pledge are met, namely that:

• The PTP is effectively promoted to the public, getting more and more people to sign
• There is effective lobbying of public figures, especially politicians, to get them to sign
• There is effective evaluation of local-level public figures who signed the pledge
• There are effective behind-the-scenes activities needed to support activities on the local level, such as management of communication processes and collaboration venues, and community support for PTP activities
• There is sufficient financial support to address the needs of the local group for things like printing, travel, tabling, and marketing, and also donations to the global Pro-Truth movement run by the educational nonpartisan 501(c)(3) nonprofit Intentional Insights to run the central operations of the PTP
• There is effective coordination of all the areas of PTP activity listed above

Sounds like a lot, right? Don’t worry, it takes a lot of time – many months and even years – to build up to the level of a full-fledged chapter that accomplishes all these goals! However, it’s good to know the eventual destination, so that you know where you’re going. It’s also helpful to know that others have already gotten there – for example the Central Ohio chapter – so you have a clear roadmap to follow.

There are clear guidelines for all aspects of PTP activism at this link, so you don’t have to worry about lacking directions. You should also read through and be comfortable with the Frequently Asked Questions (FAQs) to address any concerns. Of course, the central PTP organizers – the PTP Central Coordination Committee (CCC) – will be there to help you every step of the way. If you do decide to take on this role, you will be assigned both a mentor from among more experienced PTP area organizers, and a contact at the PTP CCC who will help you out.

Role and Timing

The role of an area organizer is to empower and support other PTP Advocates – which is the name we use for PTP volunteers – in effective collaboration to advance all aspects of the PTP project. You as an area organizer are accountable for the outcomes of the 6 areas of PTP activities listed above. To do so, we find that seeing yourself as a leader enacting the following behaviors is really helpful:

• Inspiring people to volunteer and donate by communicating first about the problems that the PTP is solving, sharing successes, and then letting them know about the needs of the group
• Finding a good fit for the ones who start to get involved in the various activities available
• Helping those who get involved work together well by setting up clear communication processes and collaborative venues
• Encouraging shared expectations and sticking to commitments, and renegotiation of commitments and expectations when life stuff comes up
• Modeling the behaviors of the Pro-Truth Pledge both in-person and on social media (for the latter, follow all the guidelines in this blog)
• Modeling direct and transparent communication, erring on the side of an overabundance of communication rather than insufficient communication
• Exhibiting emotional and social intelligence to read people and channel their enthusiasm and other emotions into healthy channels
• Addressing conflicts that will arise in an effective and healthy manner
• Providing an engaging community setting: doing fun things together, in-person and online; getting to know each other socially; building a truth-oriented community where people can find a home
• Being a cheerleader for accomplishments, and giving due praise

Remember that you will be organizing people who have very different values than you do. Whether you are religious or secular, left-leaning or right-leaning, or any other ideological perspective, you will be bringing together people to work on a shared project of advocating for truth-oriented behaviors in addressing value differences. That means that you yourself need to model an inclusive and welcoming attitude for people with different values, and be especially welcoming and inclusive toward people with values different from your own and also those whose values are in the minority in your group. Doing so will be key to helping these people both be engaged in the Pro-Truth movement and as a result reach out to their social networks and communicate the Pro-Truth message to people who hold similar values and change the culture in our society.

It takes a minimal commitment of 2 hours a week for 12 months to build up a chapter, with more on some weeks depending on what’s going on, so keep that in mind as you decide whether to go on this journey.

Caption: Image saying “not sure if I’m ready to make that sort of commitment” (Meme created by blog author)

Fortunately, you don’t have to make a solid commitment to starting up a chapter. You can just start by canvassing to gather signatures or doing public speaking, which are the two main methods of recruiting other participants. This takes a much lower commitment of time and effort, and if you are not ready to make a 2-hour commitment for 12 months, just work on canvassing and/or doing public speaking.

Financial Support

Let’s talk about giving you money! If you or any of the people you are coordinating have financial difficulties for any PTP-related needs, we can reimburse the large majority of them. See this link. For area organizers like yourself, we will consider additional requests for funding for your needs above and beyond the ones listed above, just email finance [at] intentionalinsights [dot] org with your needs and depending on our financial capacity, we will see what can be done.

This is one of the reasons for why eventually – when the group is well-established and self-supporting – there’s an expectation of members making donations to the central PTP organization. We finance any PTP Advocates – whether area organizers or not – who need financial support for PTP activism. We also spend money on marketing, website management, and other costs. So as you do area organizing, encourage members to donate both to local group needs and to the central PTP organization.

Plan of Action

Here’s the plan of action for starting up your area group.

• As an area organizer, you’d want to do activities that are most impactful, which means moving as quickly as possible in coordinating other people and doing strategic planning, rather than doing ground-level activities (however much fun those might be for you).
• You’ll start off by first getting signatures: in our experience, at least 20 percent of the people who sign up indicate they want to help, and about 20 percent of those turn out to be reliable and consistent volunteers. Here is a blog with thorough directions for gathering signatures at events through canvassing or tabling. Another way to gather signatures is to do public speaking, and gather signatures from audience members: this blog gives extensive directions on doing so.
• You can also do local-level social media, and go to various local Facebook groups and other relevant social media to promote the PTP there. You can write blogs in local venues or letters-to-the-editor in local newspapers about the pledge. This will help spread the word in the local area, but not contribute much to building up a chapter. Face-to-face interactions are crucial for doing so.
• A super-easy way to promote the pledge in daily life is to purchase and wear PTP-themed merchandise, especially when you do PTP-themed activities, but also just out and about – it’s a great conversation starter.
• Once you gather enough signatures, you would want to focus on coordinating people in their volunteer activities, decreasing your own time doing ground-level activities. Once you have about 5 people in the area interested in the PTP, start organizing meetings: here’s one typical videotaped meeting with an agenda attached in the video description that comes from the early stage of setting up an area group.
• We suggest you focus these volunteers first on gathering more signatures, enough to form a solid core team in your area of about 20-30 consistent volunteers. At the same time, you’ll want to form a coordinating committee, of about 3-5 people, who can each take charge of different areas of PTP activities and work together to coordinate other volunteers. As you start having increased numbers of people participating, check out these guidelines to help you lead effectively.
• Once you gather at least 250 signatures, and get a person who is able to take charge of lobbying, you will be ready to start lobbying local-level elected or appointed officials and other public figures in your locale to take the pledge, using the guidelines here. Of course, you can do virtual lobbying earlier, through sending them emails and tweeting them and sending Facebook messages and calling them, but do not take the time to meet them in-person until you have gathered 250 signatures as they will be unlikely to listen to you.
• In lobbying public officials, we advise you to start with candidates for office rather than office-holders, as the candidates will be more likely to take the pledge, since they have less to lose by doing so. Once a candidate for office takes the pledge, you can then go to incumbents and tell them that the candidate for office took it, and you also have a lot of signatures from their constituents asking them to take it, and see if they take it. After you get a dozen or so public figures signed up, you will want to establish a monitoring system, following the directions at this link.
• Try to set up collaborations with local groups interested in the PTP, which would usually be various kinds of grassroots political or civic education or science-themed activism groups. Ask leaders in those groups to take the PTP, and get the whole group committed to the PTP, and they will then help you advance the PTP message. Also coordinate with local branches of national organizations.
• Please make sure that, within any ordinary situation, you will respond to emails or Facebook messages about the PTP within 48 hours, and to texts or voicemails within 24 hours. It’s fine to respond saying “I got your message and will respond by ____,” so that the other person knows that you are accountable to get back to them in that time. As we are trying to promote truth and accountability, it is really important to be accountable as area organizers. Of course, emergencies come up, and that’s totally understandable. Still, if it is not an emergency and you are traveling or on vacation, please indicate that through email vacation auto-responders or something of that style. Be as professional and accountable in your activism as you can be, both to internal stakeholders such as members of the pro-truth movement, and external stakeholders who want to learn more about the movement.

Communication and Coordination

Let’s talk a bit about communication and coordination.

• If you want to be an area organizer, please email info [at] protruthpledge [dot] org, and you will be connected both to an experienced area organizer as a mentor and an Area Organizers Coordinator on the PTP CCC.
• Make sure to meet with your mentor once every 2 weeks for 6 months by videoconference or phone to help you get launched on your own.
• Please join the PTP Area Organizers Google Group, our email list for area organizers like yourself. Just click on the link in the previous sentence and request to join the group if you haven’t been added to it already by one of the core organizers. Add the email pro-truth-pledge-area-organizers@googlegroups.com to your safe senders/contact list.
• You will be added to the secret Facebook group for PTP Area Organizers. Since it is secret, you can’t join yourself, but let the person who recruited you know if they forget to add you in a timely manner. You will also get an invitation to the Pro-Truth Pledge Slack for core PTP participants like yourself.
• You should use the Slack and secret Facebook group for things that you only want core participants to comment on and know. For example, if you’re planning out things that might be perceived as controversial, such as how to put pressure on public figures to take the PTP, these are good venues to do so. So are things that require more privacy, such as discussing how to push someone to retract a statement, or how to address problems with other PTP Advocates in your group, and so on. Another good use of these groups is to troubleshoot or run ideas by a small core group rather than the bigger and less in-the-know people in the PTP Global Advocates FB group. For asking questions on PTP strategy and tactics that are of a more general nature, as well to share accomplishments, the PTP Advocates FB group is your best bet. If you want to share relevant articles that are not about the pledge but about politics in general, use the InIn Insiders group. In general, anything that has to do with the pledge is best for the Pro-Truth Pledge Advocates FB group, so make sure that anything you post there is explicitly related to the pledge. The other group is for broader content related to truth and rational thinking, in politics and other life areas.
• Each month at the end of the month, please fill out this brief update form (5-10 minutes) about your activities for the past month fighting lies and promoting truth via advancing the PTP to ensure shared expectations and clear communication. It will be sent to you in the Google Group for PTP area organizers (pro-truth-pledge-area-organizers@googlegroups.com) and also via FB. That form allows you to share what you are doing, what challenges you might be facing, and how the PTP CCC can help, whether providing you with existing resources you might not know about or develop new resources to address your needs. Please fill it out within 3 days of receipt (might want to just put a calendar reminder for yourself with a link to that form if that works well for you). After you fill it out, the PTP CCC Area Organizers Coordinator will send you names of people who signed up to help with the PTP in your area over the past month, and provide you with helpful resources, both based on your self-description of your activities and plans, and on your specific request for resources (sometimes, area organizers may be unfamiliar with all the resources available, which is why your description of your past activities and future plans is relevant for the resources section). If you due to some life events have not had an opportunity to work much on the PTP in the last month, or anticipate not being able to work on it much in the upcoming month, simply state so in the form.
• After you get the list of names of people who signed up to help with the PTP in your area over the past month, reach out to them using following this draft template, adapting it to your own needs. Make a reminder to yourself to follow up with them in a week after you sent the original email, using FollowUpThen (simply add 1w@fut.io in your BCC field).
• Likewise, try to find them on Facebook. We know that some people don’t like Facebook, but we strongly recommend you use Facebook as an organizing tool, so if you currently do not have a Facebook account, please set one up for this explicit purpose, as it’s very effective for that purpose, and encourage PTP Advocates in your locale to do so as well. You can find them on FB (if they have an account) relatively easily: just go to the Facebook search box, and put in their first and last name and state. If you find more than one person with that name in the state, then you can search by city. We recommend not searching by city right away, because some people’s actual city may not match their city on Facebook: for example, people may live in a small suburb of a large city, but indicate on Facebook that they live in the large city for clarity. If you’re relatively confident you found the right person, then send them a message saying “Thanks for taking the Pro-Truth Pledge at https://www.protruthpledge.org/ I’m an area organizer for [area], and wanted to connect on Facebook to facilitate communication and collaboration. Please extend me a Facebook friend request.” If you’re not sure that you found the right person, send a message saying “Did you take the Pro-Truth Pledge at https://www.protruthpledge.org/ ? I’m an area organizer for [area], and wanted to connect on Facebook to facilitate communication and collaboration. Please extend me a Facebook friend request if you did take the pledge.”
• If you know the person and are connected with them on Facebook or elsewhere, send the email just using their first name instead of first name and last name: the point of this email is to welcome them and give them the background knowledge about the movement. If they don’t respond in a week, check in with a message like, “Dear [first name, last name], wanted to confirm you received my previous email about the Pro-Truth Pledge, and that it did not fall into your spam filter. Thanks!”
• For folks who you connected with by FB, check with them additionally by FB messenger whether they received your email. If they don’t respond in a week after that, try contacting them from another email address, in case the spam filter blocked your original one. After that, contact them by phone if you have it, texting “Hi [first name, last name], checking whether you got my email about the Pro-Truth Pledge,” and if they don’t respond, then calling and leaving a voicemail. At that stage, if you don’t get a response, let it go.
• One of your roles as area organizer will be to manage the area Facebook group: please act as the group moderator (role described here). If there is no Facebook group for your area, get in touch with your PTP Area Organizers Coordinator to have one created. We usually make groups for states within the US and countries outside the US: once there are enough people in a country outside the US, we make regional-level groups. One of the things you’ll want to do eventually is delegate some moderator activities to others: you’ll still be accountable for making sure they’re done, so check up to make sure the person is doing them well. We find people tend to have an unfortunate tendency of forgetting to do the tasks described there. To see how a more established FB group works, join the Ohio PTP Advocates FB group – click on the link and request to join the group, and in the answer to question 3, say that you are an area organizer, and want to see how a more established group works. After the group is set up, then add all participants in your locale to it following the directions at this link. You can use that group to communicate to people effective about local activities, and use it to create Facebook group events (guide here) to organize activities.
• After you have enough people in your area (over 100), we recommend that you use these directions to set up a Google Group, which is essentially a simplified email list, for your area dedicated to PTP-oriented activities. This is for when you have a few people actively involved, so that you don’t just keep emailing each other. Name it [area] Pro-Truth Pledge Advocates, which will help people standardize things well across the country. For the group description and welcome message, we advise something like “Thanks for helping fight lies and promote the truth through joining this email list, which is focused on the Pro-Truth Pledge (PTP) and other Pro-Truth movement activities in [area]. You are welcome to send any emails relevant to PTP organizing in this list, but please avoid overwhelming folks with an overabundance of emails, so send no more than one every three days unless there’s an emergency or great opportunity. Thanks!” When adding people, use “direct add” rather than invitations, as sometimes invitations go to spam. For settings, allow everyone to send emails to the list at first, until you have too many people sending emails, and at that time, put in moderation so that people don’t become overwhelmed: a good benchmark is a maximum of 1 email every 2 days, but check with your email list members by having them fill out a poll occasionally on their experience with the list. Also, make it so users choose where to send replies, to the list as a whole or to the individual who sent the original email. Please also join the Ohio PTP Advocates Google Group – click on the link and request to join the group – to see how an established group works.
• Also, we recommend that you create a Google Docs folder with various documents relevant to your group, such as lists of volunteers, various events where you want to gather signatures, various public figures in your local area you want to target, and so on – here is an example of one such Google Docs folder for the Central Ohio PTP group. This allows group members to collaborate together effectively.
• One of the early tasks to do for your group is to get people to find local events to get PTP signatures. An easy way to do so is to create a Google Form like this one, provide it to your group members, and have them find events. Then, you can coordinate people in attending these events. Remember, try to do everything you can to lower barriers for them and make organizing as easy as possible
• Once your group gets large enough to have a coordinating group of organizers, consider creating a FB message thread or separate Google Group specifically for the organizers in your locale.
• Once your Facebook Group and Google Group is going, it’s time to create an Area Facebook Page (guidelines here) and Area Twitter Account (guidelines here). Doing so is important for providing you with credibility and public visibility. Do not feel obliged to take on doing this task yourself if you have more important priorities or lack time, instead find volunteers who are excited about doing these. Focus first on large areas, to encompass states or countries, and only later moving down to cities as support builds up.
• For guidance on creating a Facebook Group, Google Group, Google Folder, Google Form, Facebook Page, Twitter Account, or anything like that, talk to your mentor or PTP CCC coordinator.

We strongly recommend that you offer to meet with people individually to help get them oriented, either in-person or online, and once you have more than a couple of people actively involved, set up a regular meeting once a month dedicated to advancing the PTP in your locale. While not all will become actively involved in meetings and signature-gathering, those who do will spread the PTP through their social networks, do research, lobby politicians, donate, and so on. It’s really important to try to do at least one face-to-face meeting – virtual or videoconference – to get them involved with this project. Also, don’t worry about being overwhelmed with meetings as a result of sending out emails. Our experience is that only about a third of the people you email will end up meeting with you, and it will take many weeks for some to do so, so you have plenty of time to space it out.

Conclusion

Being an area organizer of a local chapter is perhaps the most important thing you can do with your time to advance the fight against misinformation and post-truth politics. We will gladly support your efforts. Please let us know how we can help!

Caption: Image of newspaper icon (angiechaoticcrooks0/Pixabay)

So you’d like to get some media attention for the Pro-Truth Pledge (PTP)? Excellent! Doing so is a great way of spreading the word to more potential pledge-takers.

After each instance of media coverage, more people visit the PTP website, and some of these visitors take the pledge. Whether they do so depends on the visitors, of course: it’s not under your control. What’s under your control is taking the steps that would lead to coverage of the PTP both by traditional and digital media.

Letter-to-the-Editor

A letter-to-the-editor about the Pro-Truth Pledge is a super-easy way anyone – and I do mean anyone – can make a meaningful difference in less than 15 minutes! Here’s a link to a guide on writing letters to the editor. In a nutshell, you’d want to respond either to an article or op-ed published in the newsletter, or write about some top-of-mind news event or calendar date. Follow the instructions of your local newspaper(s) when submitting letters to them.

Your goal is to insert a reference to the Pro-Truth Pledge, along with a link to it, in the letter. It is very unlikely that the link will be published, but it will give the editorial staff a chance to check out the website and realize it’s a credible and serious project.

An example of a very simple yet successful PTP-themed letter is this one by Carl Baker. As you will see, it’s a very generic letter. You yourself can take this exact same letter and send it to your own newspaper (Carl will be happy for you to do so). Doing so will take you less than 5 minutes, and there is no copyright or any other problem with you doing it.

Another example of a successful PTP-themed letter is this one by Stephanie Frizzell. This letter is slightly more complex, but has a stronger impact. It was topical because it was shortly before the election, and named the candidates in the local area who took the PTP, boosting their reputation as a result. This kind of letter is especially helpful to write shortly before an election. Again, please adapt it for your needs: in fact, Stephanie adapted it from a similar letter I wrote earlier. This one will take 10-15 minutes.

A third example of a successful PTP-themed letter is this one by Russ Frizzell (the husband of Stephanie Frizzell). This letter again had a tie-in to newsworthy events, namely the recent election. You can use this letter as well for your needs.

Op-Ed

Writing an opinion piece for a newspaper or online venue is another way of spreading word about the PTP. To get an op-ed published takes a combination of writing skill and strong opinion. It’s not for everyone. If you want to try it, here is a link with guidelines about writing op-eds.

We had a number of op-eds published about the PTP. For example, this one is devoted exclusively to the PTP, and so is this one. Note that both of these are in community newspapers, which do not have nearly as much competition for op-ed space. On the other hand, this one and this one sneak in the pledge into the content of the op-ed, giving it a couple of sentences. These op-eds are in very prominent newspapers, which would not have carried an op-ed simply about the PTP.

Feature Piece

Want to get a feature piece in your local newspaper, or on your radio or TV station about the Pro-Truth Pledge? It’s easier than you think. Just find the names of all the journalists at the newspaper, and hosts and producers at your radio and TV stations, and send them a pitch email inviting them to take the pledge and/or do a story about it.

Some will take the pledge, which will be a good outcome. Some will want to write a story about it. That’s how we got this feature story about the PTP in a major newspaper, as well as this feature story in a community newspaper. You’ll have more success with community newspapers than major ones, but it doesn’t hurt to try.

In case you’re worried about how to find the emails of reporters, it’s pretty easy. After all, reporters are looking for tips. Just search for the staff director or contact section of the newspaper in your area. As an example, here’s the contact list of the major newspaper – The Columbus Dispatch, 35th largest newspaper in the US – that did the feature story about the PTP. Don’t be worried about “spamming” reporters either. It’s their job to get the news, and the PTP is definitely a newsworthy story. I’d say getting a feature piece is easier than an op-ed.

If you’re doing some event related to the PTP, try calling reporters in advance and encouraging them to show up. For instance, that’s how we got the PTP on television at the March for Truth event in Central Ohio.

Social Media Venues

There are many social media groups which you can approach to encourage them to share about the Pro-Truth Pledge, such as Facebook groups, Pinterest boards, LinkedIn groups, Reddit subreddits, and so on dedicated to science, philosophy, politics, ethics, psychology, and similar topics of relevance to the Pro-Truth Pledge. In most of these venues, unless they have a specific policy forbidding sharing about external projects, you can simply make a post about the PTP, with a message about how it relates to the group’s purpose.

For example, for a political discussion group on Facebook or Reddit, you can propose that everyone abides by the tenets of the PTP. That will get some people to check it out and promote an engaging conversation. The likely outcome will be both improving the quality of discussion in the group, along with some people taking the PTP. For a LinkedIn group on ethics, you can post about the PTP as a way of promoting ethical behavior among professionals. In short, adapt the PTP to each group.

Note that in some cases, groups are heavily moderated. Heavy moderation applies especially to larger groups, which of course are ones where you tend to have a bigger impact when posting about the PTP. In those cases, check who the group’s admins are, and ask them if they would approve a post about the PTP. For checking on Facebook who the admins are, see the directions here. Do a Google search for finding admins on other social media if you can’t figure it out easily. Then, pitch them on the PTP via the templates available here. If they take the PTP, suggest posting in the group about it.

Association/Organization Media Venues

Various associations and organizations often have their own media venues. Some will have a bigger likelihood of being friendly to the PTP, such as ones associated with science, philosophy, politics, ethics, psychology, and similar topics. To spread the message via these venues, first pitch the people in leadership roles in the association on the PTP via the templates available here. Then, once they take the PTP, ask them to spread it to their audiences.

In some cases, they will ask you to write an article targeted to their audience. That’s great! For example, when we wrote this article for the Skeptic Society, it went to their email list of 100K, and resulted in about 700 people signing the PTP. Another example is this article for the United Coalition of Reason. Get the halo effect going for you by associating the PTP with that organization and the relevant audience. For example, in the Skeptic Society article, the title was “THE PRO-TRUTH PLEDGE: An Effective Strategy for Skeptics to Fight Fake News and Post-Truth Politics.” It would have been just as accurate to use the phrase “for people” as “for skeptics,” but using the latter phrase helped the audience identify with the PTP and made them more likely to take it.

Guest interview

You can also try to get on media venues as a guest to talk about the PTP. Doing so takes figuring out the contact information of the media venue and specifically the person booking guests; getting in touch with the person and showing them why the PTP would be relevant for their audience; and then showing why you would be a good person to be a guest on the show to talk about the PTP.

It helps if you have any of the following five characteristics: 1) have been active in the PTP movement for a while (over 6 months); 2) have previous interview experience; 3) are a public figure; 4) have expertise in a certain area of the PTP, for instance are a behavioral scientist with expertise in the research behind the PTP; 5) belong to a certain demographic served by a media venue, for instance if you’re a resident of a city and a radio show focuses on that city, or if you belong to a certain demographic and a podcast focuses on that demographic. We have many guest interviews you can check out as models for talking on shows about the PTP: 1, 2, 3, 4.

Conclusion

We’re excited to learn about your efforts to get media attention for the PTP! Post comments here with successes and failures, and make any suggestions on improvements in the strategies describes in this blog.