Five Reasons to Conduct Media Interview Training

Media Skills Training

Want press coverage for your business?

Then training individuals charged with speaking to reporters is critical.

Learn five benefits of media training in this article.

Given the importance organisations place on generating press coverage, it's vital to have a strategy and skilled professionals assigned to critical tasks.

Preparing individuals charged with speaking to reporters is central to this effort, for five reasons.

1. Media Training

Media interview training helps individuals cultivate the skills to engage in more productive give and take with reporters. Being interviewed by a reporter isn't simply a matter of answering questions in rote fashion while adopting a defensive posture.

It's incumbent on spokespeople to take the initiative in telling the organizations story, from its perspective.

To this end, spokespeople need to be familiar with how reporters work, the editorial environments in which they function, types of questions they're likely to ask, and their individual backgrounds, among other issues.

2. Trained Spokespersons

Trained spokespersons help an organisation secure more media coverage. Being interviewed by a reporter does not mean that the person will be quoted, or that a story will even result.

So a successful media interview training program must also address what makes news from the journalists perspective.

Equipped with such knowledge, spokespeople can focus their remarks on what journalists want, suggest story ideas, refer reporters to other resources, and, in short, make themselves valuable resources reporters turn to again and again.

3. Media Training

Media training produces better media coverage. Organizations want media coverage that, to the extent possible and practical, reflects its key messages, in other words, the main points the organisation wants readers/viewers/listeners to gain from coverage.

Training is the best way to assure that spokespeople master these main messages and skillfully weave them into their answers to a reporter's questions.

4. Purpose Of Communication

Media training increases the likelihood that what you want to communicate is covered. It's impossible for individuals in any audience to understand the purpose of your communication if you don't know what you want to say.

Media training forces an organisation to clarify what it wants to say and how, thereby increasing the likelihood that a reporter will understand these messages and, ideally, report about the organisation more accurately.

5. Educate Spokespersons

Media training educates spokespersons on typical media relations challenges. Myths abound as to how journalists work and the vital role media relations professionals play in the editorial process.

Training invites spokespersons into this process, introducing them to the art and science of building productive relationships with reporters and the vital role they play.

Perhaps more important, key players within the organisation begin to incorporate media considerations into their thinking as a by-product of a comprehensive training program, which benefits the entire organisation as it strives to navigate through a media-rich world.

This article was contributed by Mitchell Friedman