A short live-stream segment by TJ Walker giving media-training advice: he urges executives and CEOs to treat reporters' requests with urgency and respect, to return calls promptly (ideally within an hour), and to avoid treating the news media like low-priority staff—otherwise long-term relations and opportunities for favorable coverage suffer.
Chapters
You can't treat the news media like low level staff. Here's one of my frustrations as a media trainer. I work with CEOs, top executives, political leaders all over the world. And quite often they're talented people, talented community, basically all the time, good communicators. They'll spend a full day with me learning all the skills they need to look their best on tv. How to shape messages, how to package their messages with sound bites, how to deliver sound, and they end up great. Their talents are fantastic. Their skills when it comes to dealing with the media are great. But then when I talk to them or their communications executives within their organizations, two, three weeks later, after the training, here's the story I often hear when I say, any news interviews lately? And I'm often told, yeah, we had a call from this reporter on Tuesday, but the CEO didn't really like the topic, wasn't a high priority. He said he'll get back to them. And then they call back or they try to schedule the interview two days later. They treat the reporter as if he or she were some low level staffer asking for a meeting, for a requisition of new napkins or something. It just doesn't work that way, ladies and gentlemen. If you want to have good relations with the media, if you want to actually get your message into the story, you need to treat a reporter's call as if it were an emergency. Because it is an emergency to the news media. If someone calls and says they are an historian and they're writing a history book, well, sure, maybe you can take a few days a week to return their call. But the news media is by definition got to be new. They're coming up with new stuff, typically daily, often hourly. So so much of your ability to forge long term positive relations with the media is about treating them with respect. Someone calls you at nine in the morning and you have a secretary or administrative assistant, call them back at four and say, oh, Mr. Big Shot's too big for you today. Pick a number and maybe he can get back to you. Two days or two weeks from Wednesday, you're telling the reporter, you're insignificant. I don't need you today. Therefore I'm going to make you a low priority. And what the reporter is going to say is, okay, I need you today. You don't need me. That's how you treat me. At some point in the future, you're going to need me. Somebody's going to attack you, going to be scandal engulfing you, or you're going to reach out to me because you want some positive story. Let's see how quickly I return your calls. Buddy, what comes around goes around. Now if you decide you don't ever want to deal with the media, fine. But you can't be a fair weather friend. You can't call the reporters when you want positive publicity or you want your side of the story of someone's attacking you and expect reporters to drop everything, listen to you put it in the story right away. If you don't, call the reporters back when they need you, even if it's a story that isn't particularly important to you, even if it's a story you'd rather not be a part of, it doesn't matter. It's not how the game is played. You have to be responsive. You have to get back to the reporter. If not that second, certainly within the hour. If you don't do that, all the other skills of how to look good have messages, stay on message, speak and sound bite. It's all frankly a waste of time.
