Elian Gonzalez's Miami family has taken their battle for the boy to a land some media experts say will quickly seem quite foreign -- Washington, D.C.

 No longer do Lazaro and Marisleysis Gonzalez hold the media high ground, able to step out the front door of their Little Havana home to speak to dozens of reporters, backed by a cheering throng of supporters. So if they are going to be heard in media-jaded Washington, communication consultants recommend the Gonzalezes change the tenor of their campaign.

 ''The coverage is going to start to change. The boy is now with his father, and we have moved on to another phase,'' said John Hellerman, a senior consultant with Levick Strategic Communications, a Chicago company that helps lawyers get the best media spin for their clients. ''This is going to be much more spikey in terms of what gets covered.''

 Hellerman predicts that daily coverage of Elian will soon subside, at least outside South Florida. That's because the Miami Gonzalezes no longer hold the key to television coverage -- daily video moments with Elian. And in the Beltway they face a tougher press corps, one that is likely to be more cynical about the saga now that the boy is with his father and out of sight from the media.

 ''The reality is that the media is drawn to things that are attention-getting,'' said Jerry Brown, a Denver-based media consultant who once worked in Washington as an assignment editor for the Associated Press. ''What you had in Miami was made for television -- the boy, the crowd, the drama of who was going to get the kid. Elian is no longer available for the cameras. There is no place for that crowd to gather.''

 Marcy McGinnis, CBS' vice president for news coverage, said the Miami family is no longer driving the story.

 ''It will be a very different scene in Washington. The story will now pretty much be dictated by the calendar -- the court hearing, any scheduled congressional hearings,'' she said.

 On Sunday, just a day after INS agents seized Elian, CBS, NBC and ABC declined to cover an early morning Washington press conference by Marisleysis Gonzalez.

 ''The cable channels covered it, but the major networks passed, because she didn't have anything to add from what she said in Miami,'' McGinnis said.

 Although the Miami Gonzalezes have had some good media advice -- it was no coincidence that a distraught Marisleysis went before the cameras Saturday at the same time Attorney General Janet Reno was holding her press conference -- Hellerman and others believe there have been some bumps.

 STATEMENT INSTEAD

 ''I think the family mishandled this,'' Hellerman said. ''I think that they would have been better served if they had issued a statement about how having a bunch of federal agents swoop into our home and having the boy removed from us so swiftly was very emotional. And then say they were very pleased to see that Elian appears happy to see his father again.
 ''Make it a clean change of heart and then focus on the issue of lobbying for safeguards once the boy returns to Cuba with his father.''

 Brown said that to continue to fight the father and make accusations about brainwashing or doctored photos will now prove counterproductive.

 ''You cannot win a fight over whether you or the father should have custody, '' he said. ''My advice would be to let go of those issues. Now their real issue should be what happens in Cuba.''

                     Copyright 2000 Miami Herald