TJ Walker explains why ESPN gave Janae Rice final approval over her quotes in a Ray Rice interview. He says most people can't get that power, so instead learn to speak in quotable soundbites: he claims most quotes come from one of 10 speech patterns, so reporters will use what you want without you needing editorial control.
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Janae Rice wins editorial control over espn. Janae Rice is the wife of football player Ray Rice, who is famously smacked many, many times in that elevator video. She's finally told her story to espn, but here's the interesting twist. She was able to extract a deal from ESPN that she would be interviewed, but then she would have final editorial approval over quotes and what got into the story. Now, many people have criticized ESPN for giving her this latitude. It's certainly not conventional. And here are my thoughts when I hear this, because all of my clients would love to have that sort of editorial control. And indeed, in certain countries they do get it still. But the idea of being interviewed by someone for a long time and then being able to come back and say, well, I don't like that quote, or I like this one. Let's take this out. That's every CEO and politician's ultimate dream. But you can't get that because media organizations fear they would lose integrity. And then really there's no reason for them. They just become stenographers. Here's why she could get away with that. She is not someone who is a politician or a CEO marketing a product. She doesn't really need the media at this point. There's huge demand for her story and there is not a demand on her side for a lot of airtime. So she held all the cards. That's simply not something that's true of any CEO, entrepreneur, author, expert, because all of those people, myself included, we're all dying to be in the media. We want media exposure. So do not try this at home, folks. Don't try to strike a deal with reporters about complete control unless you want them to hate you. And you don't ever plan on doing another interview. If that's what you want and you have a huge, huge story, sure, you can get away with that. But if that's what you want, I would advise write your own op ed piece or hire a freelance writer to do it and just submit it, or write your own book and capitalize that way. But here's the thing everybody misses about this story and that my clients miss. That is, if you are properly media trained, you will be able to get the quotes you want in the story. Not because the reporter gives you editorial control, not because the reporter shows you the story in advance, but because you have packaged your messages with sound bites, with things that are interesting for reporters to quote. Now, that's what I do all day long in my media training business. I show clients how basically every single quote in every newspaper, TV or radio broadcast comes from one of 10 speech patterns. They're either analogies, cliches, emotions, pop culture references. Once you know the 10 speech patterns, it's extraordinarily easy to get the quotes you want in the story, and the reporter's not going to know it. Or they're not going to care because you're going to give them any interesting messages that are highly quotable and interesting to their audience. So that's the real lesson here, is desiring control of a media story is great, Fine. Nothing wrong with that. But the way to do it is for you, the person being interviewed, to have given real thought to what your messages are, and then to package your messages in interesting, quotable language. That's the real secret.
