Are you taking the steps necessary to ensure that the media is reporting your story accurately?

As it turns out, if you are, you’re the exception rather than the rule. A 2009 Nieman Reports analysis found that just one in 10 news sources reaches out to newspaper outlets when reporting errors have been made.

And when reporters get it wrong, that can be a huge problem, says Panepento Strategies Principal Peter Panepento.

“When you manage the reputation of a nonprofit that is working to advance an important mission, incorrect information—particularly if it’s reported in the media—can damage your ability to raise money and effectively advocate for change,” Panepento writes on Kivi’s Nonprofit Communications Blog.

Panepento offers tips on how to handle factual errors and omission errors, as well as one-sided attacks on your organization.

The good news is that letting journalists know about the errors often leads to change.

“Most journalists strive to get it right,” Panepento adds. “While there are bad actors who masquerade as fair-minded reporters and editors, most of the journalists who I’ve worked with are genuinely concerned about accuracy and will agree to hear out a source who believes that they got something wrong.”

Check out Panepento’s post to learn more.

Resource of the day

US Census Bureau tops list of free, public data sources for associations. Full @DSKSolutions list at https://t.co/YPphAU0QnN #assnchat

— Deirdre Reid, CAE (@DeirdreReid) June 7, 2016

Trying to build out research regarding your industry, but don’t know where to find the backbone data to make it truly relevant? Fortunately, DSK Solutions is on top of that, with a recent blog post from Matt Lesnak discussing some of the best places to find that data.

“Incorporating publicly available data provides many creative opportunities to further create association analytics to drive data-guided decisions,” Lesnak says.

Other Links of Note

Still get nervous when talking to someone you don’t know? Take a cue from a guy who’s talked to a lot of random people during his career: former NBC News anchor Tom Brokaw, who shared his icebreaking tips with Fast Company.

It’s a tandem play: Print and digital content work better when they support each other, CustomNEWS Digital Media Manager Jenn Waters writes for the Trade Show News Network.

Emails getting you down? One strategy worth testing, LifeHacker suggests, is to use a “process-centric” email—a longer email that attempts to solve a number of different problems at once.

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