Five Steps to Pain Free Interviews with Peter Burdon

Step one - Buy time and find out about the topic

Step two - Prepare your media message

Step three - Predict difficult questions

Step four - Create sound bites

Step five - Practice, practice, practice

Media Workshop with Pete Burdon 2018

What media outlets can we use?

Newspapers, regional TV, local newspapers and community papers, free community news on radio. Other outlets are papers like Canterbury Today, Auckland Today, business magazines, NZ Listener, NZ Management, Board Room, North and South, Metro, insurance magazines, renovation magazines.

What do local media want?

• They want local stories, not stories about national issues
• Take the NZPIF media releases and localise these (for example take out New Zealanders and replace with residents of the local community.)
• Obtain a local reaction to a national issue.
• Try and find statistics which relate to your location not to NZ as a whole.  QV and Affordability studies (and other research) often break down their statistics.
• If a story about smoke alarms, talk about what the local PIA is doing to encourage more installation of smoke alarms in members' rental properties.
• If a story about installing more insulation, try and get a photo of insulation being installed in a local rental.

 How can you best use the local media?

• If there are two community papers, use one at a time.
• Build a relationship with the editor of a magazine, or a journalist from a community newspaper.  Invite each one out for a cup of coffee and a chat. Ask how you can assist them to do their job.  Feed story ideas to them or stories you have written, or respond when they want local comment on an issue.

How to communicate with your contact in the media?

• Email them with a story or story idea and then follow up.  Think of a compelling local angle.
• Use the opportunity of submitting opinion pieces, guest columns, letters to the editor, and use the ability to make comments under articles in online publications.
• With press releases, have your major point at the top. Need direct quotes, a short statement about the organisation at the end and some contact details. See Peter's example of a local media release.
• Always relate your story idea to the publication or media outlet you are targeting (ie business orientated for a business magazine).
• Read local papers and magazines and get a feel for the type of story they want.
• Get hold of editorial calendars for the publications in which you are interested to find out when relevant special features are being run.  Prepare stories for these features.
• If a quote is attributed to you and it is wrong, have a good look at it and get an unbiased person to look at it before deciding some action is needed.

Using your success - Put links to any of your published stories or quotes in your PIA newsletters and on your PIA website