8 Tips for Getting Journalists to Back Your Campaign

The Daily Express recently won a high-profile campaign to give London Aquarium's basement penguins a better life.

Steph Spyro successfully campaigned to give penguins in London Aquarium a better life

If you know anything about my journalism, you’ll be aware of the 14 penguins in the basement of Sea Life London Aquarium without fresh air or daylight.

After more than two and a half years of campaigning, Aquarium giant Merlin Entertainments has pledged to phase out gentoo penguins at its UK facilities following our high-profile campaign. The owner of Sea Life London Aquarium confirmed it is permanently ending gentoo breeding in Britain. They will also build a larger enclosure for its penguins, and give them access to daylight.

I found out about the penguins back in 2024 when the animal welfare charity Freedom for Animals emailed me raising awareness of their plight. Some had been in there since 2011. Others have never seen the sun. That single press release set in motion one of the most sustained and impactful campaigns of my career.

I’ve just scoured through my inbox to see whether Freedom for Animals had emailed me before then. I don’t see any evidence that they had. One cold email led to me writing more than 50 news stories in the Daily Express. Our stories got headlines across the UK and world.

The crusade to “free the 15” has been one of my favourite examples of campaigning journalism. The Daily Express has led the charge on issues ranging from inheritance tax changes affecting farmers to the campaign that helped force a Government U-turn on winter fuel payments.

Other news organisations have embraced campaigning journalism too, from The Telegraph’s Save Our Pubs crusade to Sky News’s reporting on Britain’s maternity crisis. The penguin crusade has been an incredible education in thinking like a campaigner, which isn’t always natural territory for a journalist.

What began as a single email from an organisation I had never worked with before grew into a sustained, multi-year story that repeatedly got attention in a very saturated news agenda.

So, in this edition, I’ll explain what makes journalists take up a cause… and how you can dramatically improve the chances of your campaign becoming one they can’t ignore. I’ve come to believe there were eight key ingredients to making it a highly successful campaign.