No workshop of two to three days is ever going to turn media-shy people into media stars for their employers. But MediaTrain can help you make a good start. Understanding how the media works, what it wants and how to give it to them is key, and the foundation of much of our work. We tailor our courses to suit the needs of the organisation, including pre-workshop questionnaires and testing so that we can pitch our work effectively.
One thing we always recommend is practice: getting out those handouts and notes and trying out your messages and your on-screen persona with a colleague or a friend. You’ll be surprised how their feedback can fine-tune your delivery and make you think about the audience you are trying to reach, rather than the journalist or microphone in front of you.
One of our key clients, the Asian Development Bank, understands this well. So over the course of the last four years we have developed a system that lays the MediaTrain foundations with key officers and officials in an intensive one-day course. This builds up through a series of modules – what journalists want, how to create messages and how to organise complex material – until, towards the end of the day, every participant gets to sit in front of a television camera for a brief interview, at least once. This is then assessed by the trainers and the other participants.
There is usually time for a second try-out and this is where the trainer and participants get to see how effective feedback is: second time around, the eyes remain focused on the interviewer, sentences are shorter and more compelling, language has more impact and there is strategic use of fullstops, soundbites and story-telling to squeeze years of experience into one telling piece of footage. TV works brilliantly for this because the medium condenses the media experience into such a brief passage of time. Remember, a long news item on television is rarely more than three minutes, which equates to about 500 words or half a side of A4.
Our participants leave feeling they CAN DO THIS and promise to use the handouts we give whenever the occasion arises. We’ve no way of measuring whether this actually happens, but the key to the success of the Asian Development Bank programme is that people who do the Basics course can come back for a two-hour individual coaching session six months later.
This way the participants get individual attention to the areas they need to work on, and we get to see what progress has been made and needs to be made. It builds a relationship between MediaTrain and its clients, and we are always ready to give assistance remotely whenever called to do so.
Nor is the individual coaching limited to one opportunity. Those who want more can request further sessions and we deliver them at the earliest opportunity, usually when we are doing a week-long mix of Basics and 1-1 training.
If your organisation is serious about skilling staff to deal with the media, this kind of system might work for you too. Contact us.
Andy Hill, MediaTrain Director