media interviews

5 reasons it’s OK to say “I don’t know” in interviews

11/22/2011 By Joan Leave a Comment

questions during media interview The next time a reporter interviews you, and you don’t know the answer to a question, resist the urge to panic.

Too many interview subjects think reporters expect them to know all the answers to every potential question.

Reporters don’t. All they want is a good story.

Here, then, are five reasons why it’s OK to say “I don’t know” during an interview and how that simple little phrase can actually keep you out of trouble.

1. Reporters, particularly TV reporters, sometimes know very little about the topic of their story and need you to educate them.

They often don’t have time to do research. Sometimes they’re covering the beat as a fill-in for another reporter who’s on vacation and they’re clueless about the subject matter. If they ask you a question and you say “I don’t know,” they won’t hold it against you if they’re in the dark, too.

2. The phrase “I don’t know” is a boring sound bite.

I can’t remember the last time I saw that phrase printed in a news story, or lifted from a broadcast interview and played on the air. That’s because it adds absolutely nothing to the story. Reporters want the sizzling, sexy sound bites.


3. The question might be completely irrelevant to the story.

When I started working as a reporter and lacked confidence, one of my worst fears was looking dumb in front of news sources. Rather than just saying, “I really don’t know a lot about this topic. Can you help me understand it?,” I’d ask any question that I thought was relevant, or stall for time until I could think of a better one.

If the question is irrelevant to the story, you can say so. And then come back with “A far better question is….” or “What people really want to know is…”

That little technique, by the way, is a wonderful way to bridge from a question you really don’t want to answer to your key message. Smart reporters might not let you get away with it, but novice reporters probably will.


4. If you try to pretend like you know what you’re talking about, and you don’t, your answer can include wrong information that comes back to haunt you.

The reporter asks a tough question. You panic and start babbling. The reporter includes a quote from you, and quotes from several others who refute what you just said. Embarrassing.


5.  The urge to respond to every question can lead to little white lies.

Of course you’d never lie to a reporter. You’re not that dumb.

But I’ve seen case after case in which intertiew subjects think they owe reporters an answer to every question. “The qustion must be important or the reporter would never have asked it,” they think. So they say something—anything—and pretty soon they’re stretching the truth.

If the reporter asks a question and you don’t know the answer, you can always say, “I don’t know. But I can find out the answer to that question and get back to you. When’s your deadline?”

What about you? If you’ve been interviewed, what have you said when you didn’t know the answer to a question?

If you’re a journalist, I’d love to see any other tips you can add to this list.

Publicists, share this post with your clients. And, as always, share this on the social media sites.

Filed Under: How to Interview, PR Consultants/Publicists Tagged With: how to talk to journalists, media interviews, newspaper stories, reporter questions

Create sound bites that the media find scrumptious

11/14/2011 By Joan 4 Comments

This guest post was written by author Marcia Yudkin, whose books include, Publicity Tactics and 6 Steps to Free Publicity as well as the new Kindle ebook, The Sound Bite Workbook. She lives in Goshen, MA. Visit http://www.yudkin.com for more information on her work.

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Snagging an interview makes it possible for you to get quoted by the media. To boost your chances of actually getting air time or column inches from what you say during the interview, however, spend time beforehand creating a set of sound bites. These delicious word morsels are fun to hear or read and irresistible for the media to pass along.

Here are six sources of ideas for sound bites.

1. Triples.

You may have noticed that a lot of jokes start off with a priest, a minister and a rabbi. That’s because our minds like triples. That’s why although Winston Churchill said in a famous speech, “I have nothing to offer but blood, toil, tears, and sweat,” many people remembered his point afterwards as just “blood, sweat and tears.” Make a list of keywords for your subject matter and look for catchy combinations of threes. For example, if you’re a personal trainer, you could tell a reporter that you “help out-of-shape people get fit without pain, tedium or humiliation.”


2. Tweaked clichés.

Everyone loves an unexpected version of a familiar saying. Look up your keywords at www.westegg.com/cliche or www.clichesite.com and then start twisting what you find. For instance, if you’re a credit union commenting on recent developments in the world of banking, you could play on a common motto with “Money doesn’t grow on trees, but it does grow faster in credit unions without those greedy big-bank fees.”

3. Contrast, conflict or paradox.

A statement combining opposites commands attention. An ad for my local hospital used this principle effectively in its headline: “Nationally Ranked. Locally Loved.”

Likewise, my local paper ran a story about two guys who once made a feature film that flopped and created a documentary about their failure. The promotional line for their documentary contained interesting tension: “They don’t teach failure in film school.”

4. Clever mnemonic.

If you studied music as a kid, you may recall the formula naming the lines of the treble clef: “Every Good Boy Does Fine” (E-G-B-D-F). Create a sound bite for yourself by making the initials of a key phrase used in your business stand for something interesting. Someone who trains virtual assistants – VAs – to make a healthy income could say, “My graduates know that ‘VA’ actually stands for ‘very affluent.”

5. Details.

Review your case studies, client advice, bio and blog for details that can take on iconic significance. Have you noticed how often the number “99%” has been repeated in the U.S. political arena in the last few months? For you, the key detail might be your percentage of repeat customers, your documented accuracy rate, your carbon-neutral score – or something other than a number, like “The only thing left after the tornado destroyed our office was a teddy bear we used to keep in the waiting room to comfort our young patients.”

6. Bare-bones story.

If you can boil down a dramatic transformation into just one or two sentences, that can become a powerful sound bite. “She used to wait forever for elevators rather than take the stairs. Now she uses the stairs to train out of season for her mountain climbs all over the world.” “When it came to women, he used to be the king of the locker-room brag. Now he helps couples in marital trouble restore fidelity and mutual respect.”

After you’ve settled on the rough idea for a sound bite, fiddle with the wording so you make it as tight and pointed as you can. Often you can heighten the impact of an already good idea with a pleasing rhythm, rhyme or alliteration (as with the repeated f’s in “They don’t teach failure in film school”. And did you notice the emotion in my sound bite examples? That’s one more element that contributes to their quotability.

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The Publicity Hound says: Marcia Yudkin writes fabulous guest blog posts. But she doesn’t blog. And she says you don’t have to, either. Read why here.

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, Information Products, Pitching the Media Tagged With: cliches, media interviews, mnemonic, pitch journalists, pitching journalists, Pitching the Media, sound bites, winston churchhill

Appearing on TV? Plan for these 7 emergencies

7/13/2011 By Joan 7 Comments

Finding a messy make-up bag just before you're supposed to leave for a media interview can rattle you when you least need to be rattled.

Pitching yourself to TV talk show bookers or your local TV news directors, and convincing them to say yes, just seems like the hard part.

It really isn’t. The far more difficult task is knowing how to respond to the many emergencies that can pop up from the time you’re booked to the second you walk out of the recording studio, after the interview.

Here are seven emergencies to prepare for if you’re doing broadcast interviews.

1. You haven’t left enough time to do your hair and make-up.

Earlier today, I was schedule to appear on a live webcast with Don Crowther, the creator of the Social Profit Formula 2.0, a social media course I highly recommend. I’m one of several people he interviewed about our successes with social media. We were supposed to do the interview at 3:40 p.m. in San Diego. I was to come to the studio at noon to be briefed.

That pink mess you see above is what I saw about an hour before I was to meet Don. My tube of liquid lipstick cracked, or the top came loosef en route to San Diego.

Most of my make-up was swimming in the bright pink goo, and I didn’t notice it until I pulled a bottle of liquid foundation out of the small plastic bag and ended up with stained fingers.

During interviews, I frequently talk with my hands. Would the several thousand people watching the webcast see my neon pink fingers as I wave my hands in front of me? Or would I have to sit with my hands planted firmly in my lap?

Luckily, I was staying with Christine Buffaloe, my virtual assistant, who lives about 10 minutes from the recording studio. She retrieved nail polish remover. But as I was rubbing like mad, the toilet paper I was using to apply it kept crumbling. Chris found a clean rag. Within about 10 minutes, the stains disappeared. But it was a hassle I didn’t need.

A hair and make-up emergency can also occur when your stylist calls you the morning of the interview to cancel because she’s ill, and you can’t find another stylist who can take you at the last minute.

2. Traffic is backed up on a major road you’ve taken to the TV studio. You won’t make it on time.

Leave enough time to deal with closed roads, freeway back-ups, detours and bad weather like ice storms.

Do you have enough gas in your tank? Check the night before the interview.

If it’s in the dead of winter, do you have a back-up driver you can call if your battery is dead and you have no other way to get to the studio?

3. You learn the day of the interview that the clothes you had planned to wear don’t fit.

Nothing is worse than taking your favorite silk suit out of the closet three hours before you’re to arrive at the studio, only to learn that it shrunk after it was dry cleaned.

Wardrobe emergencies include missing buttons and no appropriate shoes to wear with your outfit.

A few days before the interview, dress yourself in the clothes you plan to wear, including all matching accessories, so you aren’t hunting for them at the last minute.

4. The TV producer calls you and asks if you can come to the studio an hour early because someone who was scheduled to be on the program before you has cancelled.

Always leave extra time the day of the interview just in case this happens.

5. The talk show host who’s interviewing you cuts short the interview. It was supposed to be five minutes. But it’s only a minute and a half because a previous segment ran too long.

Whatever you do, don’t complain! Be gracious. And send a handwritten thank-you note to the host and to the person who booked you.

6. The interviewer asks you a question you can’t answer.

This isn’t really an emergengy, but you might view it as such.

The best thing to do is to simply say “I don’t know,” and then bridge to your key message.

But why not be prepared? Ask the interviewer beforehand for an idea of the questions you’ll be asked. Broadcasters don’t mind doing this, unlike their brethren in the print media who hate “prepping” interview subjects.

7. The interviewer fails to hold up your book and mention it on camera, after telling you that she would.

Don’t refer to your book. Just answer her final question and look like you’re enjoying yourself. When the interview is finished, thank her.

Authors who have upstaged their hosts, particularly pushy authors who mentioned their books, have been blacklisted.

If you’ve done TV interviews and you have more tips to add to this list, share them here.

More Tools to Help You:

Special Report #2: Questions You Can Expect Reporters to Ask During an Interview.”

The Dangerous Hidden Secrets of Print & Broadcast Reporters

How to be a TV Talk Show Host’s Dream Date

Filed Under: Authors & Publishers, How to Interview, TV Publicity Tagged With: book marketing, Book Promotion, broadcast journalists, media interviews, radio talk shows, TV talk shows

10 magic phrases journalists and bloggers LOVE

5/4/2011 By Joan 8 Comments

When you’re pitching the media, don’t spend all your time crafting your pitch.

Think about how to weave what I call the “10 Magic Phrases” into a telephone conversation, email interview or face-to-face chat with journalists and bloggers. I’ve printed the questions on handy notepads and I use them whenever a reporter calls, or when I contact a journalist or blogger.

You could also use some of these questions when a journalist or blogger calls you for an interview, but you’re not an appropriate source. If you can help them, even if you won’t be quoted, you’ll make a good impression, and they’ll remember you.


The 10 Magic Phrases:

1. “Is this a good time to talk?”

Asking this question shows you’re considerate of their deadlines. If it’s not a good time, they’ll tell you. Ask when you can call back, and follow their directions to the letter.

2. ”Do you need other sources for this story (or blog post)?”

The more you can help a journalist or blogger find people to interview, the more they will view you as a valuable source. Be ready with two or three other sources, including contact information, you can offer them. Make certain, however, that those people agree to be interviewed.

3. “What other information do you need?”

Sometimes journalists and bloggers might not need more sources. They might need statistics, the definition of a word or phrase used in your industry, White Papers or research on a certain topic, or other data to round out their article or blog post. If you can provide it, you become an even more valuable source.

4. “How can I help you”?

Almost nobody asks this qusetion. Most people who pitch journalists and bloggers are too busy delivering their pitch. Asking “How can I help you?” is often an excellent way to start a relationship with someone who you want to eventually use you as a source. When they start talking, listen!


5. “Would you like my press kit?”

Your press kit should include information that many journalists and bloggers can access, without spending valuable interview time acquiring it.

Things like a short and long version of your bio, facts about your industry or company, frequently asked questions, links where they can follow you on the social media sites, and a place where they can download photos like your professional head shot and photos of your products will go a long way toward ensuring accuracy.

Offer the link to your online press kit. Never, ever send hard-copy press kits to journalists or bloggers without asking their permission.

6. “I can provide a (map, pie chart, illustration or other graphic).”

Graphics are sometimes an afterthought, particularly among beginning journalists and bloggers. The best time to offer this is immediately after an interview. You might have a map that shows people how to get to your event. Or a pie chart that helps people better understand a complicated topic. Or a graphic that would really dress up a long article.

Make sure these are available in whatever format the journalist or blogger requests.


7. “Are you looking for photo ideas?”

Photos, too, are sometimes an afterthought.  If you can save a journalists or blogger time tracking down photos, you’ve scored even more points.

Smaller publications, like weekly newspapers that have limited photo staffs, will sometimes publish photos you’ve taken. My ebook, How to Use Photos & Graphics in Your Publicity Campaign, explains everything you need to know on how to take great photos and share them with your media contacts.

Gina Spadafori, who has been writing primarily about pets and their care for almost 30 years as a syndicated columnist and author, has told me she’s had problems finding good publicity photos to fill a small hole on a page. “The availability of high-quality, high-resolution art can tip a ‘maybe’ item into the ‘yes’ category,” she says.

8. “Please call on me if you need anything. I am also an expert on…”

Your media contacts will appreciate knowing about your various areas of expertise. If a business blogger is interviewing you because you’re an expert on the economy, it doesn’t hurt to also let her know that you’re a wine collector.

Why would she care? She might not. But if she knows a wine blogger, she might be happy to pass along your contact information.

9. “May I call you in three months with other story ideas?”

Even though journalists claim they hate it when people follow-up, what they really means is that they hate it when pests follow up. They love it when helpful sources call them again with other story ideas, tips, leads and helpful suggestions.

If they give you permission to call again, say in three months, when you contact the reporter, say, “We agreed that I’d call you this week. You might want to know that…”

10. “What’s the best time to call you?”

Some journalists and bloggers welcome phone calls from sources they know will share valuable information. So it never hurts to ask this question. Find out when they’re on deadline, or whether they prefer calls during a certain window of time during the day or evening.

Keep Notepads Close By

Keep my notepads next to your telephone, and be ready when a reporter, editor or blogger calls. Or tuck them into a briefcase. If you meet a journalist or blogger at, say, a convention, don’t be embarrassed to pull it out and start using the magic phrases.

You can read about order the “10 Magic Phrases” notepads here and read about eight gaffes to avoid when dealing with journalists.

What other magic phrases would you add to this list?

Filed Under: Blogs, How to Interview, Magazine Publicity, Media Kits, Newspaper Publicity, Photos & Graphics, Pitching the Media Tagged With: media interviews, media kit, pitching journalists, publicity photo

Beware of journalists’ trick questions during an interview

4/12/2011 By Joan 5 Comments

Let’s see how savvy you are when it comes to interviewing with journalists.

Which of the following would you consider a trick question:

A. “What’s your annual revenue?”

B. ”I know you feel uncomfortable commenting on that topic, but how about telling me off the record?”

C. ”What’s the worst business mistake you’ve ever made, and what have you learned from it?”

Take a minute and actually write your answer on a piece of paper. A, B or C, or any combination of the above?

As a former journalist, I’ve asked those three questions many times. Now, let’s see if you’re right.

A. What’s your annual revenue?

This is not a trick question. If your company is publicly held, there’s no reason why you shouldn’t answer it.

If you’re not publicly held, don’t sweat it. Just give a range (“over $500,000 in sales”) or explain that you’d rather not provide that information for competitive reasons.

Many business stories, particularly those about small businesses, state that the owner declined to offer sales and revenue figures. Not answering won’t kill the story, even in business journals. (See “How to Use Business Journals to Tell Your Story.”)

B. “I know you feel uncomfortable commenting on that topic, but how about telling me off the record?”

This can be a trick question. But it’s also a very dangerous question. So pat yourself on the back if you chose B.

If you spill the beans to a reporter you do not know or trust and it’s “off the record,” it might show up in print.

A reporter might take something you’ve given him and run it past two other sources. If those sources confirm the information on the record, the reporter might use it. Policies on using information obtained off the record differ among media outlets. But why take chances?

Also, experienced reporters who pry off-the-record information out of you will sometimes wheel and deal and try to get you to agree to let them use parts of it. Before you know it, they’ve talked you into using all the material on the record.

Sometimes sources find it necessary to talk off the record in cases where they want to flag a favorite reporter to something that will be happening, like a major announcement, and to explain the background so the reporter will be ready to write about it when the story breaks.

Understand, however, that the 24-hour news cycle makes “exclusives” more of a risk to the source. If it’s a major story and you promise it to a reporter, but the editor doesn’t think the story is very good, she might bury it in the back of the newpaper. That can alienate other reporters who you want to c over it.

These days, many companies break news by writing about it at their blogs, and then tweeting the headline and linking to the blog post so that all media can have the story at the same time.

If, for whatever reason, you’re inclined to give the story to a reporter you know and trust, do this only if you’re experienced dealing with the media. I prefer that companies break their own news at their blogs. (See “The Dangerous Hidden Secrets of Print and Broadcast Reporters.”)

C. ”What’s the worst business mistake you ever made, and what have you learned from it?”

This is not a trick question, so don’t be embarrassed or get rattled. Everyone has a worst business mistake.

Anticipate this question and prepare your response. The media love to help their readers and viewers avoid other people’s mistakes. Rather than just identifying the blunder, explain how others can avoid making it.

If your mind goes blank when the reporter asks this question, don’t blurt out the first thing that pops into your head. Ask, “May I take a minute to think about the answer?” Or you can say, “Can we revisit this question later?”

Reporters usually don’t mind waiting.

Learn about more questions, trick and otherwise, in my “Special Report #2: Questions You Can Expect a Reporter to Ask During an Interview (Including Nasty, Hostile Ones).”

What other trick questions have reporters asked you? If you disagree with my advice, challenge me.

Filed Under: Blogs, Crisis Communications Tagged With: broadcast reporters, media interviews, off the record, print reporters, questions from reporters