Given the importance of organizations involved in the creation of press coverage, it is important to have a strategy and qualified professionals responsible for the most important tasks. Training persons accused of speaking to journalists is central to these efforts for five reasons.
1. Learning to interview the media helps people develop skills that enable them to give and receive more effectively with journalists. An interview with a reporter is not just a question of answering questions in a routine, but an acceptance of a protective post. Representatives should take the initiative in telling the story of the organization from its point of view. To this end, officials should be familiar with the way reports work, the editorial environments in which they work, the types of questions they may be asking, and their individual experiences, among other questions.
2. Trained representatives help organizations provide more media coverage. An interview with a reporter does not mean that the person will be quoted, or that the story will even lead. Therefore, a successful media interview training program should also take into account what the news does from a journalist's point of view. Equipped with such knowledge, representatives can focus their observations on what journalists want, propose plot ideas, send reporters to other resources and, in short, make them valuable resource reports to refer to them again and again.
3. Media education contributes to better media coverage. Organizations want media coverage to be, as far as possible and practical, reflect its key ideas - in other words, the main points that the organization wants to get from readers / viewers / listeners. Training is the best way to ensure that speakers master these basic messages and skillfully intertwine their answers to reporter questions.
4.Media training increases the likelihood that you want to communicate. It is impossible for people in any audience to understand the purpose of your communication if you do not know what you want to say. Media education forces the organization to clarify what it wants to say and how, thereby increasing the likelihood that the reporter will understand these messages and, ideally, will report on the organization more accurately.
5. Training in the media trains representatives of typical problems with the media. Myths abound in how journalists work, and the important role played by media professionals is in the editorial process. Training invites representatives to this process, introducing them to the art and science of building productive relationships with journalists and the important role they play. Perhaps more importantly, key players in an organization are beginning to take media considerations into their thinking as a by-product of a comprehensive training program that benefits the entire organization because it seeks to orient itself in a world rich in media.
