The Media Interview

The worlds of US politics and journalism are still reeling from the sudden death on Friday of Meet the Press host Tim Russert. The 58 year old Washington bureau chief for NBC news had just finished taping The Tim Russert Show for CNBC and was working on voice-overs for Sunday’s Meet the Press when [...]

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 [...]

Barbara Walters on one of the main reasons she stopped doing the TV newsmagazine 20/20 back in 2004:
…it seemed that every celebrity, every murderer…had a lawyer or a press agent all interviewing the interviewer to determine where they could get the most airings for their clients, what kind of questions would be asked, and how [...]

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 [...]

During a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board on May 23, 2008, which was streamed live over the internet, Hillary Clinton mentioned the assassination of Robert Kennedy in a passing comment about nomination campaigns historically lasting into June. That mention became the centre of a firestorm.
Here’s the headline from the newspaper that apparently [...]

So often the people who most deserve to brag about themselves are the most reluctant to toot their own horn. I talk about “selling yourself” in your media interviews, but that phrase doesn’t sit well. It’s seen as unprofessional to enumerate your best qualities or your finest accomplishments. But as C.J. Hayden [...]

A TV interview with New Zealand celebrity Nicky Watson late last year became an instant classic after this part of the encounter was repeated over and over in the MSM and the blogosphere:
Watson: “I must have called [her lost] dog’s name a million times and I hope that when he hears my voice he will [...]

One of the myths of media and presentation coaching is the notion that how you say something is far more important than what you’re saying. The idea got its primary boost from the studies of Arthur Mehrabian back in the 1970’s. Only problem is, that wasn’t exactly what he was saying. Jim [...]

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 [...]

Jon Greer blogs on B-Net - Catching Flack about when it’s not a good idea to insist on email interviews. He tells how the Ann Arbor News was writing a series about universities letting athletes take easy courses to maintain their scholarships:
The paper sought an in-person or phone interview with [University of Michigan] president [...]