Re: push back on negative articles

[Stormy Peters <stormy gnome org>]

I think we could arrange some media training if people want to attend. 
Sally Dhudairi works with Apache and lives in Boston. She has expressed 
interest in helping us in the past. Maybe she'd be willing to host a 
session at the Boston Summit.

If she can't, I know a few other people who would be good and might be willing to help.

Here are my basic takeaways from the several media trainings I've done:
1) Know your story. Know what you want the other person to take away from the conversation. Write those 3 things down.

2) No matter what the question, try to tell your story. Or how that relates to your story. See #1.
3) If someone asks you a tough question, you don't have to say "no, but ..." Try to get back to #1. 
4) Practice how you'll answer the tough questions ahead of time. (You probably know what they are.) Most companies put out FAQs for their spokespeople when there's big news. Included in that is how to answer the difficult questions.

While a few reporters only want the controversy, most of them are very nice and also want the story you are passionate about. :)

Stormy

On Sun, Aug 19, 2012 at 8:08 PM, Karen Sandler <karen gnome org> wrote:

I love that we're re-evaluating the ways that we handle press and that
we're looking for opportunities to improve.

I think we should focus on ways to get positive press, as others have
said, and I think one of the best ways to do that right now is probably to
talk about the 3.6 release. Maybe we should systematically look at the
negative articles and make sure that we address the substantive points in
our press about the new release? I think a free software community run
project is different than a company's product in that we'll always be a
work in progress. It's ok to talk about areas that can be improved for
future, for example. I do think there's a lot of great stuff happening
that I gets overlooked in an effort to zone in on juicy disagreement and
we can probably help with that by making sure we take opportunities to
talk about the good things.

We've still got a good amount of time to work on it too.

On Sun, August 19, 2012 6:43 pm, Olav Vitters wrote:

> Briefly, any politician or anyone dealing with the press is media
> trained. Any big company will have spoke persons (either someone
> external, or some high up manager). For anyone reading along, the idea
> is not that they (spoke person or anyone media trained) lie; it is to
> avoid any spins. Say exactly one thing, nothing more.

I think it would be a good idea to get media training, and I'd be up for
being the one to do it, of course! I am a little skeptical about how
overall effective it will be (I've had small amounts of training in the
past that would have been helpful if I'd want to be more like a television
personality for example with tips on wardrobe, and I've had other media
experts tell me that everything we do is too "inside baseball"). Depending
on the price, it couldn't hurt!

I have a few friends who have had some media training and I'll ask them
who to contact. Anyone else have any ideas where to start? Let's find out
what kind of options there are and see if we can maybe find some group
sessions that would be helpful. I think we're a handful of people that are
generating most of our marketing content right now, and it would be great
to spread the knowledge around.

I realize that I should remind everyone that I'm probably going to be out
of contact for a lot of September on maternity leave so we should come up
with a game plan for 3.6 release related press at any rate!

karen

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