Devex jobs: Career advice from an Islamic Relief UK media officer

LONDON — Emily Wight, a media officer with international aid agency Islamic Relief U.K., was expecting to have a quiet week helping to plan the organization’s long-term communications strategy. But then Beirut was hit by disaster. Islamic Relief teams immediately began responding to needs on the ground and Wight was tasked with responding to a flood of media enquiries.

“The press phone was off the hook,” she said. “I ended up pitching and coordinating broadcast interviews with our Lebanon country director and briefing him, writing a quote for him and drafting and securing a first-person piece that was published in Huffington Post U.K.”

Press or media officers for humanitarian and development organizations are responsible for helping to raise public awareness of their organization’s work by responding to queries from journalists, trying to find new ways to interest them in stories, and writing press releases and statements on behalf of the organization.

“Sadly, it is the nature of my job that when disaster strikes, I have more work to do,” and more opportunity to get the media interested in stories about aid, Wight said.

A major challenge is that “a lot of the U.K. media is quite hostile to the aid sector, and coupled with a sadly growing hostility to Islam as well, sometimes people’s immediate reaction to ‘Islamic Relief’ is not altogether positive.”

That makes clear, effective communication about the organization’s work all the more important.

Wight spoke to Devex about the highs and lows of working as a media officer in the aid sector. The conversation has been edited for length and clarity.

What are the best — and worst — parts of the job? 

The best part of the job is seeing the impact of the work you do: Knowing that securing media interviews for aid workers will add important color to a story and make it more likely to be seen, driving donations, key messages, and raising awareness.

The longer you work in this job, the more you realize that it’s not just about immediate donations ... Doing impactful media work strengthens relationships across the organization and the sector, helps our various strands of work to function more smoothly, and hugely improves our prospects in the long term.

The thing I find most difficult about the job, particularly as a former journalist, is the sign-off process. The bigger the organization and the more people involved, the more likely it is that statements, quotes, blogs and so on will take longer to be signed off — and sometimes it’s just too late to meet journalists’ deadlines, particularly in the age of rolling news coverage. What was a story at 5 p.m. yesterday is no longer a story at 10 a.m. today.

How did you end up in this particular role? Is there a typical career path for people in this line of work?

Like many media officers, my background is in journalism ... working in digital journalism at The Guardian … [and then] as a features reporter at the Phnom Penh Post, an English-language newspaper in Cambodia.

This was an incredible opportunity: Not only did it hone my news judgment and writing skills, but I also learned a huge amount about a fascinating country and issues around human rights and international development more broadly.

On my return to the U.K., I realized that my journalism background, and other voluntary experience on the committee of a small international development education charity, could lend itself well to charity sector communications.

I gained experience in various different national and international charities through temping work via recruitment agencies [before eventually landing a full-time role]. It felt like a long slog at the time, but it paid the rent while I looked for more permanent positions, and it also gave me a crucial insight into communications teams within the third sector [which includes NGOs and nonprofits].

While starting out in journalism is quite common to getting into press office work ... it’s certainly not the only route. I know people who have studied PR, filmmaking, or who have even moved into the profession from other charity roles, such as fundraising.

What skill sets have you found to be most valuable?

I always knew that writing was a strength, and I have undoubtedly built on this by writing in different formats for different audiences and learning how to do this as quickly as possible.

But one skill set that I have been surprised to find useful in my professional life is social skills. In my job, forging and maintaining contacts is crucial, as well as keeping up with who is moving where [in the media]; who’s gone freelance; who’s moved abroad to this or that country. Being in the know is the difference between no media coverage and hugely increasing the brand awareness of your organization and its work.

How have you seen your role change as the sector has changed?

Media officers are constantly having to adapt to the ever-shifting news environment, thinking of different types of deadline[s] for different types of media and having to think outside the box to gain coverage.

One of Islamic Relief U.K.’s achievements from last year was launching a mobile game, Virtue Reality, which showed users how foreign aid works in a fun way ... This was a communications product in itself, and we launched the game at the National Videogame Museum and invited schoolchildren, turning it into a PR event. Through this we engaged audiences we hadn’t before, through tech and education media, to increase awareness of the work we do.

What advice would you have for others looking to pursue this kind of work?

Keep abreast of media developments and gain experience in digital media and video shooting and editing. These things are becoming more and more attractive as charity teams’ budgets shrink and departments are looking to what people in-house can do.

Also, both the charity sector and the media are notorious for being difficult to break into without volunteering or doing low-paid internships. This contributes to a serious lack of diversity in both sectors.

If, like many, you cannot afford to do this, breaking into the sector through an entry-level administrative role is another option. Once you are in there and making contacts, and especially if you are blogging on the side, you may be able to offer to contribute to communications outputs and impress your potential future boss.

Register with recruitment agencies that specialize in communications or the charity sector, take temporary roles while you look for something more permanent, and when you’re in there, keep your ear to the ground for any other work coming up.

What should people know before pursuing this career path?

You should know that the workload is varied and can be very fast-paced. You should be prepared to produce accurate and compelling pieces of work to strict deadlines, and to be able to manage your time efficiently.

But this is something that can be learned as you develop your career. The skills and qualities that are more crucial to this kind of role are an ability to write well, an ability to communicate well verbally and influence people, a strong news judgment and an eye for a story.

Of course, you should also be passionate about social justice, humanitarian work, and international development. It’s very difficult to be motivated to talk about the work of an organization you don’t care about!