The Media Interview

Being prepared for a crisis situation is important for any organization, but in the case of nonprofits, it can be particularly vital. That’s because nonprofits often have a constantly fluctuating staff, low budgets for handling emergencies, and a crisis situation is one of the few ways to get in front of the media. Training an [...]

There are three possible explanations for GOP Vice-Presidential candidate Sarah Palin’s poor showing in her first two major media interviews: 1) she is receiving no media coaching 2) she’s receiving very poor media coaching or 3) she’s receiving good media coaching and is not yet able to implement it. What is even more startling than [...]

Karrine Steffans achieved notoriety with her 2005 book, Confessions of a Video Vixen, a tell-all about her sexual encounters with the rich and famous. One of her lovers had a pet name for her – superhead – and the name stuck. Now she’s out peddling her new book, another tell-all called The Vixen Diaries. What’s [...]

Having finished a confrontational radio interview, Lowell Massachusetts school committee member, Jackie Doherty attends a breakfast meeting and is introduced to one of the radio station’s owners: We talked about whether radio had to be nasty to attract listeners. He said you can have “provocative” radio without being overly negative (wouldn’t that be something). The [...]

You’re a former contestant on American Idol. You’ve just finished having lunch, and as you leave the restaurant, some guy sticks a cellphone or other small camera in your face and starts asking questions about your career. You give a few answers as you try to walk away, including your opinion of Britney Spears’s performance [...]

Washington DC media trainer Lou Hampton recently posted some good tips about preparing for media interviews with investigative reporters in particular: You should assume the reporter has details of your private life as well as your private business dealings. He goes on to talk about the ease with which those details are accessible these days, [...]

Check out this detailed account on the Huffington Post of how the message of a media interview can get misrepresented in the editing process and perhaps more importantly how the misrepresentation certainly seems deliberate. According to business psychologist and author Debra Condren, she was approached by a producer from ABC’s Nightline, who was looking for [...]

Sometimes there’s good reason to get up and leave an interview. Here’s a detailed account by John Davison, editor for the gaming blog 1UP, about his appearance in 2005 on CNBC’s The Big Idea with Donny Deutsch. Davison claims he was badly misled by the show’s director about the topics to be covered and that [...]

Bit off topic here, but may I just say that spam blogs are wasting a lot of my time and making some blog search engines almost useless.