What Do You Learn in Media Training? | Public Speaking

22 Aug 2013 · 2 min

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1:36

TJ Walker (YouTube video) argues that media training is a distinct skill from public speaking that most professionals need formal instruction in. He compares media training to learning to write—everyone learns writing basics in school—and emphasizes practical differences (e.g., camera angles, on-camera appearance) and the career consequences of poor media performance.

Chapters

Do you need media training? Or maybe you're just a natural? Well, let's stop and think about that. How many writers do you know? Great writers, Pulitzer Prize winning writers who didn't get formal instruction on how to write, they all had to learn. They all had to go to first grade, had to learn the Alphabet, punctuation, grammar. It's exactly the same thing with learning how to speak to the media. It's not that it's intellectually that challenging or difficult, but it's different from giving a speech. You can be the world's greatest public speaker and be awful at dealing with the media because you don't understand the differences. You can look great and confident in front of a live audience, but you can look scared stiff, nervous, or just rumpled on TV if you don't know the specifics of camera angles. So yes, everybody needs writing instruction at some point. Most of us got writing instruction every day, first grade through 12th grade, college, graduate school, some of us. And yet people have to go in front of the media and are often thrust in front of the media without a single day of training. Doesn't make sense. Every other important skill that you use in your career, you were trained often for months or even years. And for a lot of you, you're at the point in your career when how well you perform and communicate through the media can have a huge impact on your career. That's why you need media. TR.