Zen and the Art of Managing the Media Interview

As a business journalist for more than two decades, I conducted countless executive interviews with public relations professionals present in the room. 

So, imagine my surprise when I made the transition to public relations and learned that many public relations professionals – especially those who are relatively young – have very little experience managing interviews. In fact, far too many young public relations professionals do not know how to confidently prepare for and manage an important media interview.  

This is unfortunate, because this is one of the core services our clients expect from a PR agency. On the flip side, managing an interview is a golden opportunity for you and your agency to demonstrate your value directly with your client’s top leader or leaders. 

When I made my career transition from journalism to public relations, I found I was surrounded by scores of smart, talented people who taught me many things – but nobody taught me how to properly manage an interview. I received that training indirectly as a reporter working as I interviewed executives at Ford, General Motors, FiatChrysler (now Stellantis), Toyota, Honda and the communications staff for scores of Tier 1 suppliers. 

What follows below is an outline that can serve as a guide for best practices based on years of experience as a business reporter conducting interviews managed by savvy PR professionals, along with quite a few managed by not-so-savvy PR professionals: 

To properly prepare, you need to know and understand the reporter, what he/she has written about recently, and – if possible – what’s going on in their professional life. And you need to be able to provide counsel based on this knowledge to your executive and tell them what to expect. 

Is it OK to ask the reporter for a list of questions they plan to ask? This is a very delicate area. In almost all cases, it is a bad idea to ask reporters for questions in advance. Reporters who agree to this violate core journalism ethics – and any PR professionals who ask this question are at risk of harming their own credibility. 

But you can politely ask them if there are any key topics or issues they intend to ask about – and you can also make it clear there may be hot-button issues your client will not be willing to talk about. Asking for topics or themes or for a description of the story the reporter has in mind typically yields a response from a reporter with a few bullet points or a one-to-two sentence description of where they hope to take the interview. 

From there, it’s your job to do the research necessary to develop a set of possible questions that a reporter from this media outlet would likely ask – and you need to think of the toughest questions possible and coach your executive on how to answer those questions based on what you know about your client and their organization. It is also good practice to provide your executive with a short bio about the reporter along with links to recent stories. Doing this helps to give your executive confidence going into the interview. 

For important interviews, inexperienced executives or interviews with an aggressive reporter, a 30-minute prep call with the executive several days in advance of an interview should also be considered.  

Meanwhile, you should provide the reporter with additional background about your client, your client’s company and a photo in advance of the interview. This is vitally important for two reasons: 

• Reporters are extremely busy. If you can make their life easier by providing relevant information that will help them, they will appreciate your effort.  
• This is an opportunity to lay the groundwork for the key issues and key messaging you want the reporter to write about. The information and background you provide can help steer the reporter to the topics you want them to write about. 

The next step is to be on the call with your executive and the reporter or be there in person. Since you set up this meeting, and you hopefully know the reporter personally, it’s your job to make the introduction.  

Start off by reminding both parties why the call was scheduled, briefly mention the primary topic or issue that was the premise of the initial pitch or press release and – most importantly of all – ask if all sides are OK with the interview being recorded. Remind everyone of any other ground rules that were agreed to prior to the call.  

Note: Most reporters will be relieved and will say they were also planning to ask if they can record the call. 

Recording an interview is important for several reasons.  

• The recording can often be used in the future as a backstop to correct factual errors – but this is rare and the least important reason. 
• Often, reporters – who are experts at interviewing industry experts – generate an interesting in-depth conversation that you and your team can use later to draft a thought leadership byline and additional future media pitches to other media.  

Recording an interview often leads to big and unexpected benefits. About a year ago, a reporter’s question with one of our clients led to a very good 10-minute discussion on a point we had not previously explored. The reporter didn’t include that point in her story and we used the content to draft a byline that was published later by a prominent trade publication. In another case, a story lingered because it took us a long time to assemble the photos a reporter wanted to support his story. By the time the photos were provided, he said he had lost his notes. Since we had the recording, we provided it to him and it led to a wonderful feature story in a high-profile publication.  

Once the interview starts your next job is listening quietly, but also carefully.  

You want the reporter and your executive to have the best conversation possible – so you need to let the reporter roll with the interview and allow the conversation to develop. 

There are exceptions, of course. If the reporter starts heading down a completely unexpected road, your job is to jump in remind the parties about the intended premise of the interview. You can say, “We are not here to talk about that today, perhaps we can revisit that topic sometime in the future.” 

On the positive side, if the interview starts going into deep details about prior announcements your client has made, you can jump in and tell the reporter you can send additional background information after the call. 

Most reporters end their interview with some form of, “Is there anything I missed?” Or “Is there anything you wanted to talk about today that I haven’t asked about?” 

This is a golden opportunity for your executive – and for you! If some topic, major point or upcoming event was missed and your executive fails to mention it, then you should jump in and add that point and say your executive can elaborate on it if desired. 

It’s also your turn to ask some questions. Ask the reporter: 

• If they know when they might publish a story based on this conversation. 
• If they think they need anything else for their story, such as photos, prior press releases, data your executive referenced, etc. 

Now you are finally in the home stretch, but you are still not done. Here are the final steps: 

• Send the reporter any follow-up information, prior press releases and photos that were discussed during the interview. 
• Monitor for the reporter’s story to be published or broadcast. 
• Follow up in a week or two if no story is published yet. 
• Once published, read the story to make sure it presents a fair and balanced picture of your client and the interview that was conducted and check for any factual errors. 
• If there are any factual errors, alert the client ASAP and work on a plan to reach out to the reporter to ask for a correction or an updated story.  

Assuming the story is fair and correct, send it to your client and take a moment internally to reflect on what went well and if any improvements can be made during future interviews with your client…and celebrate with your team! 

Brent Snavely is Vice President of Media Relations at Franco. Connect with him on LinkedIn.