Speak First Newsletter - April 2006

Managing the Media

You may not be interested in the media but they may be interested in you.  A rapid increase in the number of TV and radio channels has created a greater demand for interviewees.  This means any one of us is more likely to be interviewed. Increased coverage of business means that companies are increasingly expected to put up a suitable spokesperson. Can you afford not to talk to them?  What is it you want to promote?  How well prepared or confident do you feel about facing a journalist on camera, or with a mike, or indeed just on the phone?

If you are going to put time and energy into talking to a journalist, then you want them to use what you say and you want your message to come across with impact.  As Whitney Young Jr said, "It is better to be prepared for an opportunity and not have one, than to have an opportunity and not be prepared". We are much more "media-savvy" as a population, and the general public expect interviewees to perform to a high standard.  Fortunately, improvement with training is rapid - in one day, we can often improve from being totally hopeless to thoroughly proficient.  And if you really want realistic training, a professional cameraman raises the standard dramatically.

Click here to get some tips for how to handle the media from one of our expert media trainers, Neil McNeil, who wrote an article for Financial World.

So how are media skills different from Presentation Skills?  There are many skills that are the same - having a clear key message, having a clear objective, using some powerful words, enunciating clearly, projecting your voice, and using strong body language.  But there are some differences too.  In the media you need to develop sound bytes.  These are no more than a couple of sentences to sum up your message or answer a question. 

Often you will only appear on TV or radio for 90 seconds, possibly two minutes.  And this is despite a much longer interview, unless you are on air live.   It's therefore important not to say, "As I said before..." If what you say after this is the best sound byte you've made and the editor only wants to use this piece, you've ruined it because you've prefaced it with referring to a past statement.  Even in print you need to be succinct to avoid losing the journalist's interest or being misquoted. You also need to be even more aware of not using jargon as your audience is likely to be much wider than in a presentation.