The first thing you've got to do when you're preparing for a media interview is figure out, what's the actual message that you want to see in this story. That's not the same thing as brainstorming on 2000 questions that the reporter might ask you don't know all 2000 questions a reporter might conceivably ask. Let's start off in a very narrow, focused way. Let's say for example, it's a tech story. And you could write anything you want in the first paragraph of this story, whether it's going to be in the Wall Street Journal, or the new york times in one paragraph. And I mean, literally just three sentences.

What would you want your message to be now? You can't just dictate the message and have a reporter take it. But as a way of framing your thought, this is incredibly helpful. So ask yourself given this topic, what is it you want to see in the store that's gotta be your starting point. Now. When you're coming up with your media message, you really got to think about three very specific things.

What's important to you what helps you what makes you look good? What benefits you your organization? That's one thing. The next thing you've got to think about is what's of interest to the reporter? What is this reporter who's doing an interview on this topic, a story on this topic. going to want to quote you talking about there.

The third thing you got to think about is the audience, the readers, viewers, listeners. Sometimes it's helpful to think of this as a Venn diagram. Here's what you want. Here's what the reporter wants. Here's what the audience wants. You have to find something that's in the intersection of all three.

So for example, if the news topic is there's an explosion at your factory and there's a fire going on and people are missing, you can say all day long. Safety is our number one concern at the walker chemical company, but there's No way the reporter is going to find that message interesting at a time when there's a fire going on and people are missing. So that's a complete waste of time to put a message like that where people get into trouble is they try to force a message on to the media that the media isn't going to find interesting. If I'm running for the United States Senate, and my opponent has just attacked me for failing to pay income taxes for 20 years, I can't have is one of my messages. TJ Walker donates more time to children's volunteer services in the community than anyone else.

I might not like, I might like that. But there's no way a reporter who's doing a story about the fact that I'm under investigation for not having paid taxes for 20 years is going to put something completely unrelated into the story. So that's what you've got to do. You need to brainstorm on messages. And you've got to figure out what's important to you. Interesting to the media interesting to the audience.

And then figure out what are your top three messages, something you can say in 30 seconds or less. A good message is something you should be able to say in 10 words or less. And since you can have three messages overall for the whole interview, you should be able to say everything you need in 30 seconds. So that's your assignment. Now I want you to brainstorm a particular media assignment, and then come up with three message points, something you can say, in 30 seconds or less. Go ahead and do that.

Now.