23 - Dealing with the press

Summary

I am unable to understand how a man of honor could take a newspaper in his hands without a shudder of disgust.

– Charles Baudelaire

It may be a bit surprising to find a chapter on dealing with the press in a book on teaching business management. As it turns out, though, business management instructors are confronted with a surprising number of opportunities to speak with the press. Journalists of all kinds, newspaper, magazine, and freelance, are likely to call one day, sooner than you might expect, to ask your opinion about any number of broad topics that they heard somewhere that you had special expertise in. This chapter will present some ideas that may help you deal with these opportunities.

Press contacts usually happen in one of three ways: cold calls, referral calls, and publication follow-ups. In cold calls, an instructor gets a phone call out of the blue and is asked some questions about events taking place in the world or a particular topic on which the writer is developing an article. It may not be you in particular whom they are calling, rather it may be they are simply seeking someone at your company or university who can give them some good insight or pithy quotes.

Referrals typically come from colleagues or from your organization's public relations department. University or corporate press relations offices keep contact with various new wire services in their regions so that when an academic or corporate opinion is called for, the reporter may call the press office which will then refer the writer.