The Media Interview

Bobby Jindal quoted by Stephanie Grace one month before his badly-delivered response to President Obama’s speech to Congress on February 24, 2009: Jindal said that, in effect, the GOP should stop fretting over the identity of its next standard bearer. “We have to not worry about the messenger, ” he said, “and start focusing on [...]

Author Will Weaver on being prepared for unprepared interviewers: My 2 1/2 minute TV interview was with a woman anchor with big hair and pancake make-up, who scanned my novel’s inside cover during a cut-away to a commercial, then returned, on-air, to brightly to ask me questions about the novel –but I know the game, [...]

Everyone is talking about the judge who wouldn’t stop talking – the unusual, eccentric, unorthodox style of Judge Larry Seidlin during the televised hearings into the custody of Anna Nicole Smith’s body. At one point, Judge Seidlin paused to assess his performance: Ohhhh, I did a lot of talking. You know, the more you talk [...]

wall·flow·er: a person who from shyness or unpopularity remains on the sidelines of a social activity Are you being a wallflower in your media interviews? Are you waiting on the sidelines of the conversation, hoping the interviewer will ask you THE QUESTION? Never let yourself come away from an interview saying “I wish they’d asked [...]

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 [...]

U.S. Senator Trent Lott gives a very clear example of the “Sorry, but the answer will have to wait until I make my point first” technique for handling live interviews: BLITZER: I know you have concerns about this troop increase going forward in Iraq. But I just want you to spell out what your concerns [...]

Rob Amberg of of Cushman/Amberg Communications in St. Louis posted an interesting piece about Emotional Branding on his Transom blog (love the name – visit the blog to get the background on it). He talks about how Matt Miller, the CEO of Playworld Systems uses ads and media exposure to promote his company by attaching [...]

In a post for the Online Marketing Blog, Jolina Pettice argues that there’s “no we in media interviews”: …it’s very common for interviewees to fall into a habit of saying, ‘we do this’ and ‘we do that’. The problem is that ‘we’ is not your company name! When companies have invested significant amounts of time [...]

From FemaleScienceProfessor: the few media interviews I did were very disconcerting. It’s very different from teaching — when you teach, you have lots of opportunities to say things in several different ways until you are sure you get the point across. In an interview, you get one shot to sound intelligent. Or not.

I was reading an article about impromptu speaking by speech coach Lenny Laskowski and found some useful tips to apply to media interviews. Unlike speeches or presentations, media interviews are part impromptu, because no matter how much you prepare, you don’t know exactly what the interviewer will ask or the direction things will take. That’s [...]