Articles

The biggest pop star in the world is seen week after week attending her boyfriend’s NFL football games. Her presence helps drive up game ratings and creates a social media storm, with fans and detractors going after each other. Yes, we’re talking Taylor Swift and Travis Kelce. Their romance puts smiles on the faces of their fans and frowns on the...

Jason DeFord navigated through the world of drug use and drug dealing, including time behind bars, before transforming himself into the singing star known as Jelly Roll. While Jelly Roll’s music defines him now in the public eye, DeFord doesn’t hide his past. Instead, he uses it to fight the evil of Fentanyl and its devastating impact on millions...

Anyone who has attended one of our crisis spokesperson workshops will tell you how important it is to express empathy during a crisis press briefing. You want the community to know that you care about the people who have been impacted by a crisis event. But you just can’t deliver an empathetic message, you have to sound like you mean it!...

What is the easiest way for people to destroy their credibility when speaking regularly to the media? It’s saying one thing in one interview, then denying they said it in another, especially when their original comment is recorded. It’s amazing how often this still happens because recorded words live forever! Presidential candidate Robert...

You are a university president dealing with one of the most difficult issues of our time, the apparent rise of antisemitism on American college campuses. Your tepid response to antisemitic rhetoric on your campus leads you and two other university presidents to testify before a congressional committee investigating the issue. Instead of arming...

So, you’ve been speaking at a news briefing or public gathering and as the event ends, a reporter approaches to ask questions about a topic you don’t want to discuss. What do you do? First, here’s what you don’t do. You don’t get angry, call the reporter rude, and threatened to call the general manager of her TV station. That’s what Houston Mayor...

Live television! Sometimes you just don’t know what you’re going to see and hear when a person on your tv screen doesn’t realize the camera is on and the microphone is hot. Over the years, we’ve seen many examples, some funny, some sad, many in between. However, for the person who makes the mistake, it’s usually embarrassing or downright...

During our media training workshops, clients sometimes ask if it’s appropriate to share personal experiences and anecdotes in answers to a reporter’s questions. Our advice depends on the topic and the circumstances of the interview. But as a rule of thumb, if your personal experiences are relevant to the topic, sharing them may help humanize you...

A college football player makes a late and very hard sideline hit on an opposing player. The incident is perceived by many as a dirty play that sends the University of Colorado’s Travis Hunter to the hospital with a lacerated liver. The player who made the hit, Colorado State’s Henry Blackburn, is condemned by many fans, some of whom actually...

When holding a crisis news briefing, the temptation is to start by describing a series of events in sequence from beginning to end. This may seem to make sense, until you realize you might be burying the most important message in your statement. The Minneapolis police chief may well have had this in mind when he addressed the media shortly after...