The Media Interview

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 do a regular TV segment on Wednesdays. During our noon news, I speak on a parenting issue.

This assignment came on the heels of an interview with the station’s news anchor. She did a feature on my toilet teaching audiotape. Then while on maternity leave, she encountered the desperate lack of practical parenting on the news. Upon her return to work she called to propose I do this weekly segment.

Ok, so I stretched things a little to get a catchy headline. The point is, that Brenda did so well in her initial interview that she was uppermost in that producer’s mind when the idea struck.

From her article Media Mistakes.

There’s only one thing in the world worse than dissing the media that interview you and that is, doing it publicly, like in a blog:

[I ended up] doing not just one, but two days of media interviews.

i shouldn’t complain, really. the outcome of my first cold-call pitching was great. we got the globe, province, cbc, canadian press, metro, 24, a bunch of small town rags and a bunch of radio stuff - including a cknw show with a certain former liberal party member of which i can not stand, even to type her name

Maybe this person doesn’t care if a small town newspaper ever calls them again or if that radio host blacklists them… ohh, the dangers of blogging your innermost thoughts.

Reading through a post by author Tricia Goyer entitled You Never Know… I was reminded that doing your very best in every media interview is important because you don’t know what might come of it.

So often we get focussed on selling a book, promoting a product, convincing the audience, that we forget about other benefits - in Goyer’s case she got a speaking engagement from one of her media interviews. In a sense, then, your media interview is also a kind of job interview too.

Sorry about the added pressure

Had a client on the radio the other day and he arranged with the station to have a link from their website to his home page. Several times during the interview the hosts mentioned about going to the website for more information. So far so good.

When the program ended, my client began monitoring his website hits. Nothing. A few more minutes go by and still nothing. Finally he decided to check the station’s website and, sure enough, they had misspelled the address for his site.

Luckily the station was able to correct the error right away and the moment they did he got six visitors, but imagine what might have happened in the 35 minutes between the interview and the correction of the address…

Media coach Roberta Gale reminds us all of an easily-forgotten point for phone interviews: turn off your call waiting!

Yeah, it’s a godsend when you’re talking to your mother and the network is trying to call to let you know you’ve made the finals of “American Idol,” but it’s a less-than-stellar feature when you’re being interviewed on the air and the audience [can] hear the tell-tale “drop-out” as your call waiting kicks in.

Put this on your to-do list for telephone interview preparation. And include the instructions for disabling call waiting as part of that list. It’s usually a simple pressing of a couple of buttons, but why worry about remembering that or trying to look it up at the last minute.

Oh, and for your post-interview to-do list, include “turn call waiting back on” or you’ll miss that call from Idol!

In June 2004, Irish journalist Carole Coleman did a now-famous interview with George Bush (full transcript here) in which she pushed the US President about the war in Iraq in a way that few had done before that time. She subsequently wrote a book that takes off from that interview - Alleluia America: An Irish Journalist in Bush Country - an excerpt of which appeared in the Times Online.

The excerpt offers fascinating insights into how interviews with the President are arranged, conducted, and, as this example shows, how they are sometimes followed up by White House staff:

“We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she [White House press officer identified as MC] said.

“How is that?” I asked.

“You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.”

“Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers.

“He did give you plenty of new stuff.”

She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again.

“I’m here with Colby,” she indicated.

“Right.”

“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.

I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.

“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.

“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”

It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.

As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish “colleen” bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes. If anyone there had done their research on RTE’s interviewing techniques, they might have known better.

MC also indicated that she would be contacting the Irish Embassy in Washington — in other words, an official complaint from Washington to Dublin.

“I don’t know how we are going to repair this relationship, but have a safe trip back to Ireland,” MC concluded. I told her I had not meant to upset her since she had been more than helpful to me. The conversation ended.

My wife just had a phone call from a TV station saying how much they enjoyed having her client on air - it wasn’t merely the fact that they’d received dozens of phone calls long after a giveaway of the guest’s book or that the interview had gone swimmingly; they genuinely enjoyed meeting the author.

You know how good it feels meeting someone who’s vibrant, interesting, and interested. Be that person before, during, and after an interview, and you’ll shine, not only in the eyes of the audience, but of the media as well.

This phone call is also a good reminder that a follow-up call, card, or email to a host, producer, or reporter is a welcome touch and continues the connection you made.