The Media Interview

Comedy writer Mike Snider has a great list of RADARs that people possess. It’s a take off on the notion of Gay-Dar, the ability immediately to know if someone is gay or straight. The list is hilarious, but this one jumped out to someone obsessed with media interviews: ReallyFarDar – ability of spokespeople for NASA [...]

A fascinating new trend in interviewing has emerged during the course of the US presidential primaries: the live-to-web editorial board interview. Sitting around the table with editors of a media outlet is a long-standing tradition, but the idea of streaming it live over the internet adds some interesting new dimensions. Take the editorial board meeting [...]

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 [...]

English football manager Avram Grant gave a bizarre press conference after his Chelsea team’s win over Everton on April 17 – so bizarre that The Independent ran an almost complete transcript. I say ‘almost’ because it doesn’t give a full sense of the pauses and silences. Anyway, here’s part of the one-word wonder at work, [...]

I saw an accomplished scuba diver being interviewed the other day and one of the opening questions was: how many dives have you done over the years? She hesitated for some time and then began saying how she hadn’t kept accurate logs, etc. If you find yourself being asked for numbers or statistics – consider [...]

Part of a posting by Alex Zuffoletti, a graduate student in journalism, about her class’s trip to the IMG/Bollettieri Academy, which trains high-level athletes: one talk that I did enjoy was with these two former actors. They led the “game on” aspect of the program, which basically teaches sports stars, or wannabe sports stars, to [...]

Found some tips for scientists or other experts who are being interviewed by the media. Here are a couple of the points made in a seminar by Patricia Thomas, Knight Chair in Health & Medical Journalism at the University of Georgia: 4. Visualize explaining your newest publication, or the events you’ve been asked to comment [...]

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 [...]

Wrestler Chris Jericho was on Fight Network Radio recently to talk about his new autobiography, A Lion’s Tale. I loved his response when asked if he was “sick of media interviews yet”: I’m happy to talk to anybody. I just did an interview with a fourteen-year-old kid that has his own website. And yesterday I [...]

Detroit Lions wide receiver Roy Williams was out delivering pizzas for an afternoon recently – all because of a media interview. Back on September 24th, during his weekly chat on WDFN radio, Williams said he never tips the people who deliver pizza. Doh! Despite trying to clarify himself on a later broadcast, the outrage poured [...]