The Media Interview

During a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board on May 23, 2008, which was streamed live over the internet, Hillary Clinton mentioned the assassination of Robert Kennedy in a passing comment about nomination campaigns historically lasting into June. That mention became the centre of a firestorm. Here’s the headline from the newspaper that [...]

Author Carl Weisman blogs about his experiences as a published writer, including doing media interviews: Wow! That was intense. Imagine doing twelve interviews in one morning, including four 10 minute interviews back to back without a break. If you ever find yourself doing radio publicity for one of your books you just may have to [...]

Jon Greer blogs on B-Net – Catching Flack about when it’s not a good idea to insist on email interviews. He tells how the Ann Arbor News was writing a series about universities letting athletes take easy courses to maintain their scholarships: The paper sought an in-person or phone interview with [University of Michigan] president [...]

I’m always saying you can’t let things distract you during an interview. Here’s a story from the BBC about police Superintendent Bryan Lawson, who was being interviewed on location about drug raids: As I was talking, I could see a guy in the corner of my eye walking past carrying something the size of a [...]

That is, if there’s a recorder on. Canadian Prime Minister Stephen Harper learned this the hard way recently, when a 2005 encounter with a journalist came back to haunt him. Tom Zytaruk was working on a biography about MP Chuck Cadman who had recently passed away, when he heard that Harper – at that time, [...]

Here’s a blog reader, commenting on the blog of a writer who is a social media marketer, working in part on Second Life… You did pretty good [on the TV interview], it’s fun to see someone we know being on the News! There’s still something about being on broadcast TV, even in the middle of [...]

Larry King gave a good demonstration last night of what not to do as a guest. He was on Anderson Cooper 360, being interviewed by John King about Dr. Jan Adams walking off the Larry King Live show. Larry King was constantly looking away from his interviewer and at the camera. Breaking eye contact in [...]

Answer: carry on as if they did and have your own people pose questions to you. That’s what FEMA did back on October 23rd. Having informed the media of a briefing on the California wildfires 15 minutes before it was to start, it’s not surprising that no one turned up. A couple of reporters listened [...]

I’ve never been a huge fan of talk shows (or any show) that has a street-level window for a backdrop. Inevitably, something distracting is happening on the street… like the other morning in Ottawa, Canada: Morning Show Mooning Revisited – Watch more free videos Thanks – I think – to Keith Olbermann on Countdown for [...]

One of the dangers of doing phone interviews (or IM interviews) is that you’re free to do all sorts of other things at the same time, as blogger Rene Gutteridge discovered: …I realized not too long ago that I was getting to an almost frenzied state of multi-tasking. This occurred to me one day during [...]