When you're coming up with your messages, the next thing you have to think about and it's related to the first aspect of what questions will be asked, Do you have messages that are going to be genuinely interesting to the reporter? reporters get to pick what they want that goes into the final story. So it simply doesn't help to have messages that you know, a reporter will find uninteresting or self serving, or boring. They're not going to put it in the story for any form of edited interview. So you need to actively think about what ideas do you have, that are going to be interesting to this reporter given his or her editorial focus, the audience what they've talked about before, and the scope of their coverage. So actively brainstorm, now, write tight, brainstorm, every idea that you can think of, that's going to be interesting.

Sticking to this report Now, you may have things that make you look horrible and awful. You wouldn't want to say that would be interesting to the reporter. Doesn't mean just because it's interesting to the reporter, it gets into the final message. But brainstorm. Now there's no penalty for having a horrible idea come out now, because you're not in front of the media yet. You want to do your thinking now, not in the middle of the interview.

People always say, teach me to think on my feet. I want to be quick. And my response is why that's dangerous. That's hard. Do your thinking now, sitting down a blank sheet of paper blank computer screen. Let's just brainstorm.

So that's your next assignment. brainstorm on every message on your topic that is of interest to the reporter