By Dr. Ray Begovich
Dr. Ray Begovich is a veteran public relations professional and a former newspaper reporter. He is an assistant professor in the Pulliam School of Journalism at Franklin College, near Indianapolis.
Coaching Management, 9.1, February 2001, http://www.momentummedia.com/articles/cm/cm0901/word.htm
More than ever before, baseball coaches at all levels must be media savvy. Because promoting the sport, your school, and your athletes has become increasingly important, knowing how to work with the media has become one more part of a coach’s job description.
But how do you get more media coverage? And how do you get your positive message across to journalists? The following 10 “drills” can help ensure that you rack up media relations victories throughout your coaching career.
Drill 1: It’s My Job
The first concept to embrace this simple truth: “Working with the media is part of my job. It’s not some bizarre extra hassle that is occasionally and unfairly thrust upon me.”
Like any part of your job, working with the media will have its ups and downs. There will be times when media coverage of your success will make you positively glow. There will be times when you wish you had a normal job that allowed your not-so-successful days to remain known only to you and your boss, not to thousands of newspaper subscribers or television viewers.
Sometimes you will appreciate the prominence you gain in the community by being spotlighted in the media so often. After all, everyone enjoys a little recognition for a job well done.
Sometimes you will be baffled by the inaccuracies and mistaken impressions that are reported as facts. Let’s face it, you make mistakes in your job, doctors make mistakes in their jobs, and journalists do indeed make mistakes in their jobs.
Coaching is not easy. There are many challenges that go along with the rewards. These days, coaches need to accept the fact that the challenges and rewards of working with the media simply go with the territory.
By the way, look for the right role models when it comes to dealing with the media. Bob Knight and Mike Ditka can get away with berating the media and lapsing into the occasional press conference tirade. But in today’s world of state-of-the-art media relations, such tactics are as extinct as the dinosaurs.
Drill 2: Lower the Frustration Level
Far too many coaches feel frustrated about how the news media demand so much of them, yet give them so little in return. Some coaches carry their media frustration with them as constantly as they carry whistles around their necks. But knowing one of the tenants of journalism should help—a journalist’s job is not to make you look good. Many coaches feel that sports journalists should only be reporting what a coach wants to have reported—and, of course, always portraying the coach and the team in a positive manner.
But a journalist is not your friend, ally, or personal publicity agent. A journalist’s primary loyalty must be given not to a news source, but to readers (newspapers and magazines), viewers (television) or listeners (radio). And that means journalists sometimes report things they feel are important for their audiences to know, but that anger, disappoint, or even sadden news sources.
In journalism lingo, you are a news “source.” As a source, you should rightfully expect and politely demand accuracy, fairness, and objectivity from a journalist—and that’s it. You’ll never lower your frustration level if you expect journalists to do only positive stories, to be cheerleaders.
Drill 3: Know Your Message
In political campaigns, public relations professionals exhort their candidates to “stay on message,” whether it’s a message for a particular week or for an entire campaign. A good example is the way Bill Clinton’s advisors during his first run for the White House used the phrase “It’s the economy, stupid” to keep their campaign on message. Coaches, too, should stay on message as much as possible.
Each time you deal with the media, you should have a message that you want to get across to the various “publics” you care about. Such publics are made up of the people who may read a story about your team in the newspaper or watch a story about your team on the six o’clock news. Your publics may include players, parents, administrators, fellow coaches and teachers, opposing teams, and the self-appointed sports experts who will chat about the story on Saturday morning at the local barbershop.
Remember that the media are not the real target of your message. The media are simply conduits to your intended public audiences.
Coaches have to take the time to develop messages they wish to communicate to their publics. If you don’t have a message ready when you do a phone interview for the local paper’s game preview story, you’ve missed your chance to get your message to thousands of people. Advertisers pay good money to get their messages to those readers, and you shouldn’t blow an opportunity to get your message out for free.
Now, what kind of message do you need to develop? As a coach, your message probably will vary from week to week, depending on how the season is going. Maybe it’s a confidence-boosting message. Maybe it’s a reality check message. Maybe it’s a rebuilding message. Maybe it’s a things-aren’t-as-bad-as-they-look or a we’re-not-getting-cocky-and-we’re-taking-it-one-game-at-a-time message.
The particular message doesn’t matter. What matters is that before you do any interview—whether for a preview story, a feature story, or a post-game story—you need to take at least a few minutes and come up with a message you want your publics to hear. And you must be sure to work that message into the interview even if the reporter doesn’t ask a question that seems appropriate for your message. Too often, interviewees think they have to wait for a reporter to ask just the right question. And too often, that question never comes; in which case the door is closed on getting your message across.
The bottom line: Have something to say, and make sure you say it.
Drill 4: Keep Composure
I remember interviewing a basketball coach in a locker room just minutes after his team suffered a heart-breaking loss. He was crying, hard. The loss hurt. No doubt about it: his tears were a justifiable, acceptable human emotion. But, his tears could have become part of my story. That could have been a justifiable, acceptable service to my readers.
I chose not to report that he was crying in the locker room. Although it would have been a compelling emotional tidbit to include in the story, I felt that in this particular situation it didn’t add any depth to the story and would simply be humiliating to the coach. However, not all reporters would have looked at it the same way and could easily have made his tears part of their stories.
Now, does his crying make him any less of a coach, any less of a man? Of course not. A lot of people would be impressed by how much he cares about his team, his profession. The point is not that crying in the locker room is good, bad, or indifferent. The point is that the crying coach lost a bit of control of what he was giving the media to report on.
The drill here is to practice getting and keeping your composure in tough situations so that the media report on your words, on your message, and not on extraneous things about you, such as crying or slamming doors or throwing clipboards.
No one expects a coach to be jovial after a loss. And you shouldn’t be. But becoming too emotional, too sad, or too mad gives journalists something extra to report on, something other than the facts of the loss to inform your publics about.
The composure drill will come in handy not only after tough losses, but also in dealing with what you deem to be belligerent, unfair questions by a reporter, either in a one-on-one interview or in a press conference. In such cases, set the record straight, but don’t get mad. Be the cool, confident coach who is the epitome of a “class act.”
Drill 5: No Whining
This drill is short and simple. It consists of telling yourself over and over that in media interviews you will not blame your losses and misfortunes on anyone or anything. Not referees. Not injuries. Not the weather. Not the crowd. Not your mother-in-law. Not the grueling schedule the wicked athletic directors concocted. And especially, not on negative media coverage.
Drill 6: Be Accessible
For the “be accessible” drill, tell yourself this at least once a month: “The five o’clock news goes on at five o’clock every night, with me or without me; and I want it to be with me.”
Journalism is a deadline-driven business. As a news source, you have to be willing to play the deadline game. It’s a game with only one rule: A news source must be accessible to a journalist in the journalist’s time frame, not the source’s time frame. You, as a news source, want to come through for a journalist so that the he or she has as much time as possible to meet a deadline.
Sometimes, you will have to drop what you’re doing in order to meet a journalist’s deadline. But that’s okay. Media savvy professionals in all fields know that media coverage is well worth the schedule adjustments it sometimes requires of news sources.
Whenever I’m writing an article that requires interview sources on a topic I’ve written about before, I remember those sources who came through for me on my deadline. Those sources are the most likely to get called again by me, the most likely to get coverage for themselves and their organizations. Sources who didn’t come through for me on deadline are toast. I’ll never try using them again unless I absolutely have to.
Being accessible also means that journalists have more than one way to reach you. It’s generally a good idea for the reporter on your beat to have your home phone number and your cell phone number. This doesn’t mean that you allow journalists to call you at all hours of the day or night. It’s simply a recognition on your part that journalists do their work after most of the rest of the world has done its work. Journalists appreciate sources who provide after-hours access.
If a journalist does call you at home at a bad time to check a few facts for a story, just deal with it. If the call is a request for comments and quotes on a certain situation, it’s okay to tell the reporter you’re busy and that you’ll call him or her back later. You don’t have to accommodate every on-the-spot interview request. You can buy yourself a few minutes or an hour to get your thoughts together and develop some appropriate responses to likely questions. Then you can call the reporter back and, in most cases, still meet the deadline. The cardinal rule is that if you promise to call a journalist back, do it.
Some coaches simply aren’t going to get coverage for their teams unless they take the initiative to contact their local media with scores and game reports. Let’s say you’re at an away game. You’ve lost. It’s late. You’re tired. You don’t feel like finding a phone and calling your local newspaper. But remember, it’s part of the job. And you should want coverage, even of a loss. More important, the coverage is maintaining a good relationship with your local reporters. They appreciate sources they can rely on.
Drill 7: Take Charge
The big problem you have in dealing with the media is that you’re trained as an educator and coach, not a media spokesperson. The big advantage you have in dealing with the media is that you’re trained as an educator and coach, not a media spokesperson.
As an educator and coach, you’ve already developed the communication skills you need to work well with the media:
• the ability to get your points across quickly and clearly;
• the ability to break complex subjects down into brief, cogent phrases;
• the ability to use analogies and examples to illustrate meaning.
So, the drill is reminding yourself that you already possess the key communication skills you need for performing well in interviews. You don’t need to come across like the president’s press secretary briefing the White House press corps. You need to come across as a caring, intelligent, calm, together coach. In other words, just be yourself—be a teacher, be a good communicator. Don’t freeze up or put on an act whenever a notebook or camera is in front of you.
Now you need to harness those skills as best you can to take charge of an interview. Taking charge of an interview doesn’t mean you verbally shove the reporter around. It means you use your communication skills to get your message and key points across to your publics through the media. Yes, journalists always have the upper hand in this situation—you can’t really control what they report or how they report it. But you can influence it.
You influence reporting by making sure you mention and draw attention to your key points in an interview. You influence reporting by providing your own context for questions or interpretations offered by the reporter that you feel may lead to inaccurate reporting. For example, to draw attention to your key points, you say something like: “Well, I think the three important factors that affected the outcome of the game are...” To provide your own context to a reporter’s question or interpretation, you say something like, “A more accurate way to look at it is ...”
Here’s an extra hint: For print interviews, slow down so that the reporter can take accurate notes. Journalists generally can write pretty fast, but they’re not stenographers. You can help make stories accurate by talking slowly and clearly. Make sure you pause if you think you’ve gotten off a phrase that you particularly would like to see quoted in the paper. If the journalist can’t get the whole quote down accurately, it won’t appear in the story. Don’t worry about awkward pauses in a print interview—after all, it’s an interview, not a first date.
Drill 8: Know the Journalist
Just as a journalist works to get to know as much as possible about a news source, you should learn as much as possible about a journalist who is interviewing you or covering your game.
If you’re lucky enough to have a reporter who covers you regularly as part of a beat, then you probably already know a lot about how the reporter does his or her work. The drill is to remind yourself to use that knowledge to your advantage.
For example, does the reporter who regularly covers you tend to misquote you? If so, then work on getting your quotes across to this particular journalist more clearly and carefully. (It is fair game to tell a reporter if you think you’ve been misquoted, but do so politely. Ask for a correction only when it’s really important.)
Perhaps your knowledge of a journalist indicates that the journalist tends to call on very tight deadlines, possibly even while a story is half-way written and with deadline just minutes away. In this case, your knowledge of this journalist’s practices will lead you to develop messages, context and quotes to keep handy—like an Old West gunslinger would keep a six-gun always ready for the quick draw.
If you have to deal with a reporter you don’t know, try to find out something about the reporter. One way is to try and recall if you’ve seen or read the reporter’s work. What impression did that work give you? Also, maybe a coaching colleague has dealt with the reporter and can give you a few pointers: “Yeah, that reporter’s a pompous ass in an interview, but he’s pretty fair and accurate. Don’t let his attitude freak you out.”
By the way, many news sources get nervous when a print reporter pulls out a tape recorder. Don’t be nervous, be glad. With the tape recorder, the reporter is more likely to quote you accurately.
Drill 9: Look Good on TV
The drill here is to pull out these tips once in a while, especially before a pending television interview, to keep brushed up on how to come across well on the tube.
• Always look at the reporter, not the camera. The old saying is that only news anchors and used car salesmen are allowed to look directly into the camera.
• Speak in brief, meaningful sentences—and, if at all possible, make time to practice what you want to say.
• If you make a mistake, correct yourself.
• Be sure to work your main point into your first answer. If you wait for the reporter to ask you the right question, it may never come.
• Control your body language and your demeanor. Be cordial, calm, confident; but not cocky.
• Dress for message success. Don’t wear clothing or jewelry that distracts a viewer from what you’re saying and makes the viewer think, “What a wild tie!”
• Assume that any microphone anywhere near you is on, recording your words. Don’t say anything before, during, or after an interview that you don’t want broadcast on TV.
• It’s natural to be nervous when doing a TV interview, but the tension is greatly reduced when you know what you want to say and you’ve practiced it.
Drill 10: Take It Easy on Yourself
One final, but important, drill is to always remember not to be too hard on yourself about how you perform in media interviews. Sometimes, you will make mistakes. You will say things that don’t quite convey what you really mean. You will see things printed in the paper that you said, but really wish you hadn’t.
Lighten up. Don’t expect yourself to be perfect every time. In baseball, hitting .300 is pretty good. Nailing 80 percent of your free throws is pretty good. Completing 12 of 17 passes is pretty good. Perfect doesn’t happen in sports and it doesn’t happen in media relations either.
But, just as in sports, knowledge of the rules of the media relations game and constant drilling on the fundamentals of how to work with the press will lead to more enjoyment of the process, more confidence in your performance, and more media relations wins for you.