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 and JPL giving media interviews to sense which folksy metaphors or slang terms for large astronomical distances will resonate with particular audiences.

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 on, to a specific layperson – such as your mother, your fifth grade teacher, or a stranger seated next to you on an airplane. Use analogies and metaphors. Borrow imagery from sports, cooking, gardening, automobile or household repair, or popular TV shows or music – anything consumers are likely to know a little something about.

5. Skilled reporters often try and formulate metaphors or analogies during an interview. If this happens, work with the reporter to make the imagery as clear and accurate as possible. If an analogy is close, but not entirely accurate, work with the reporter to make it right. Otherwise you’re to blame when the faulty analogy appears in print.