The delivery person arrives at the MindFreedom office with a big mysterious box. 

What's inside?

Uh oh.

Once more it's a box of 'raw material' such as photocopies of correspondence, court documents and medical files. We've received boxes in our office with hundreds of pages of such raw documents, which must be expensive to photocopy and bind.

Meanwhile, at the same time on our laptops in the office we're receiving a passionate e-mail, pouring out a person's life story, and many pages of heart-breaking oppression they have faced.

Unfortunately, too often, both that box of material and that long e-mail have something in common: We usually can't use the material in our campaigns.

Why?

What we tend to be able to use, if at all, is 'digested material' such as a brief article that is written like a newspaper story. When we get a brief, clear, written article on a relevant topic, there are times we can use it on the web, on an e-mail list, or in our MindFreedom Journal.

Please note: Important Disclaimer

Even if you submit a brief, professionally-written article, there's no guarantee MindFreedom itself can use it. In fact, we get so many e-mails, letters, articles, etc. that we cannot even acknowledge all of the many submissions.

However, if you prepare a brief, clear article like a journalist, in general it will be easier to get your message out, if not via MindFreedom itself then in other ways.

We wish MindFreedom had paid, trained journalists who could process much of the raw material we receive into readable brief summaries. We do not. 

If your news is truly important -- and it is, right? -- then remember in the 21st century each of us is our own media.

Even if you have a very long story (e.g., life history), a succinct introductory article about your longer piece is helpful on the web. That way someone can read a brief description and then decide whether to download a much longer piece and read it off line.

More and more it's almost a requirement to accompany a brief stand-alone article with one good digital photo, for potential use on the web.

We Are All Our Own Media

Certainly, 'mainstream mass media' is also important. Too often corporate media ignore important stories about human rights and alternatives in mental health. However, note that when a MindFreedom story has broken into mainstream media it's often because a reporter has first seen our own articles and photos that we have created and posted on our own web sites, first. 

So no way around it, if you are a human rights activist you are also hopefully your own journalist, or you have some friends or colleagues who can help you be your own journalist.

This suggestion to 'write a brief news article' sounds simple, but a lot of people may find it a bit challenging at first. However, we all are able to tell a story. 

Some tips about writing your own article as a beginner are common sense. For instance, why put in acronyms without spelling out the whole phrase first? We need to realize that people brand new to the issue may have absolutely no idea what initials mean.

Clarity is one of our most important nonviolent weapons. Imagine you're a busy reader who needs to quickly grasp what a piece is saying.

Yes, it may be a bit of a challenge to sit down and write a story, even a brief one, because it does take a bit of work, research, double-checking and discipline. But again, if your news is important, it's worth the effort!

In a MindFreedom campaign on forced electroshock, it was a one page "letter to the world" written by Paul Henri Thomas, for whom English is a second language, that eventually mobilized literally thousands of people to speak out, together.

He spoke from the heart. He described his forced shock. And he moved us.

By the way, note that Paul made it clear in the title of his piece -- letter to the world -- that his plea was meant for wide distribution. If you e-mail out a story, many people will assume it is meant to be kept private unless you tell them they may share it with others.

There is a learning curve even for amateur beginer journalists. Consider studying newspapers and news web sites and see how professional journalists do it.

Examples of what a journalist does:

• journalists tend to start with the most important point as "lead." They seek to write their lead in a way that is interesting and draw in the reader. Sometimes they'll "paint a picture" by describing a scene at the start of an article. For a brief news piece, they'll often just sum up the most important news in the very first sentence.
  
• Journalists are supposed to at least try to be objective, do research and include facts. Journalists are supposed to double-check their facts. Even if you are writing an 'opinion essay' rather than plain news, try to make include some accurate facts, and make logical points based on evidence.
  
• Journalists are supposed to include 'who what where why when how.'
• Journalists often insert a quote or two to humanize their story, and they seek to report such quotes accurately.
• As mentioned above, but it bears repeating, in the 21st century a journalist often includes at least one digital photo for an important story. Note that all featured "Google News" stories have that in common: A photo. If you don't take a photo, you can sometimes find a generic image (e.g., a state map for a story about a state) that you can use.
  

There are plenty of other tips on the web, just google words such as:

Remember: This social change movement is all about empowerment. You can tell a story that may reach many people to win human rights and alternatives. No one can stop a well told story.

If your article is a human rights alert that is also calling for action, you may benefit from reading MindFreedom's top ten tips on creating an alert. You can find the link in 'related content' below.

Comments from a professional journalist

MindFreedom asked a professional journalist to review the above suggestions.  Here's what this reporter said:

I'd say you did a good job summing up how to be your own journalist.

There's a tip I got years ago at a writers conference for people trying to pitch their fiction projects to agents and editors that also might help. It's the, one-sentence, one-paragraph, one-page technique.

You should be able to summarize your story in one sentence, i.e:

"After 20-years of drug therapy with its debilitating side effects, I found real relief from my symptoms with nutrition, art and volunteer work."

You should be able to give more vivid details in a paragraph:

"I stared in the mirror and couldn't believe my eyes. After a year on Zyprexa, I had gained 80 pounds. Worse, my doctor was warning that I showed pre-diabetic symptoms. It was the beginning of the end of my relationship with drugs. ...."

You should be able to show the arc of the story in one page that includes all the who, what, where, when, why details.

I'm not sure who came up with the one-sentence, one-paragraph, one-page idea, but it's certainly helped me clarify my thinking. As long as you don't attribute it to me, feel free to use it if you think it's helpful.