The Media Interview

PR blogger Gerry McCusker makes the point on PR Disasters that companies (or anyone) should treat interview requests from bloggers like they would a request from mainstream journalists - what is the blogger’s point view, what is their purpose, will the interview be posted, how will it be posted?
The example he gives of a [...]

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 [...]

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 portable [...]

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 the [...]

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 [...]

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:
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Thanks - I think - to Keith Olbermann on Countdown for tipping [...]

If you do well in a media interview, and you have a wide niche that you can talk about, you might be called on by the media outlet to become a regular guest expert. How does that happen? Well for author Brenda Nixon it went like this:
In my hometown of Kansas City, I [...]

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, and so [...]

Finally got to see the much-talked-about Paris Hilton interview on Letterman last week. I’m no fan of Hilton’s public persona, but I felt for her to a certain extent. Letterman starts in with questions about her stay in prison, and never ever lets up. Even after 4 minutes, when Hilton says she [...]