Check first!
Never … ever… go to a media interview without checking with the public affairs people Continue reading Check first!
Ignorance, Arrogance, Obliviousness
Two recent highly publicized pronouncements show that you have to be cautious about every statement you make in public and that you might never completely recover from a monumental gaffe no matter how many times you apologize. One group of statements were by Oscar Munoz, head of United Airlines which experienced the manhandling of a passenger caught in an overbooking mess and captured on a … Continue reading Ignorance, Arrogance, Obliviousness
Answering ‘the’ call
When news media call, who answers? Every company should think about responding to calls from media and other people off the beaten path. How often might an average company get such calls – once in a blue moon. How often are media calls crucial to the company – every single time. Much more important than who fields that call is how the recipient handles the … Continue reading Answering ‘the’ call
False News
What is ‘false news?’ Some might define the term as “almost everything out of Donald Trump’s mouth,” but the truth is that false new is nothing new. It has been a feature of the mass media since the concept of news was born. False news is simply something that did not happen. The purposes of false news range from making the perpetrator feel more powerful … Continue reading False News
Media strategy
Two major communications gaffes were highlighted in the news media in Canada and the U.S. during the week of February 8, 2017. One was the reaction of Tim Horton’s executives to interview requests from the Globe and Mail; the other was the decision of the Trump Administration to bar leading media outlet reporters from a White House press briefing. Both decisions, according to reports in … Continue reading Media strategy
Your angle?
Quite often, our principle media trainer opens a class by asking his business executive students, “What is the most important thing you want to say to the media about your company today?” The answer, almost always, is “Our company is a forward-thinking leader in our business space with best-of-class products and outstanding service.” In other words, the students’ angle is a line direct from the … Continue reading Your angle?
New era
The world of communications has never before gone through such a large number of changes in such a short time. In the space of a few years, news and information gathering and distribution have jumped around faster than a flea on a dog. We have gone from newspapers and broadcasts packed with as many stories as editors and producers could jam into them to the … Continue reading New era
Scams
Online and telephone scams are a serious threat to everyone and to communications in general these days. And they are getting more effective all the time. Usually, online and telephone scammers are phishing – seeking information they can use to pilfer money from bank accounts, extort payments from people or to order products in ‘your’ name that they can then sell to make their illicit … Continue reading Scams
It is YOUR story
This is the tenth and last in a series of blog posts about what media training trainees think when they come to a session. We sum up, here, the overall expectations of trainees. Very few executives, engineers, sales people and others who are pegged by their organizations to take media training know what to expect from a session. Most have a vague idea that they … Continue reading It is YOUR story
Get interviewed but get real
This is the ninth of ten in a series of blog posts about what media training trainees think when they come to a session. We talk here about interviews that trainees face at typical media training sessions. If and when you take media training, the class will include practice interviews. These typically will be conducted by the media trainer sitting across from each trainee. Some … Continue reading Get interviewed but get real
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