Roger Ailes, the wizard of Fox News knows what sells. And it seems that Sarah Palin isn’t a hot commodity any more.  She was the GOP’s distaff voice of “no,” railing against the “lame stream media,” President Barack Obama and just about everything that happened since she and John McCain lost in 2008.  But the hockey mom didn’t turn on the red light for audiences and so she and Fox called it quits.
The problem? Palin never learned how to carry a conversation. Whether she was on the Q side or the A …

Exactly when did the media interview become the format of choice to say, “I’m sorry?” For weeks we’ve been speculating on what Lance Armstrong would tell Oprah and what Oprah would ask. I wondered if he’d have a round of media training in advance of their encounter. After all, who could forget James Frey and the grilling he got for misleading Oprah and members of her book club with fabrications in A Million Little Pieces. But this would be different, less personal. Lance had not conned Oprah, he’d conned the …

There are countless examples of what Wired Magazine terms the “indiscreet subject.” That’s a reference to people who say more then they should in media interviews. In the summer of 2010, four-star General Stanley McChrystal was relieved of his command in Afghanistan after he and his staff vented their frustrations to journalist Michael Hastings, on assignment for Rolling Stone magazine.
The article, headlined, “The Runaway General,” was so sensational it put the White House in near-crisis mode for forty-eight hours. Quote after quote was a scathing put-down of the non-military leaders, including the vice …

The DJs who made the call that Jacintha Saldanha passed on to her colleague at King Edward VII Hospital are very sorry. They regret that a prank to capitalize on the fame of Kate Middleton took such a terrible turn.  A dedicated nurse killed herself and now many are blaming them.
The radio personalities Mel Greig and Michael Christian acted like a couple of school kids. It’s hard to imagine that at 2DayFM, a radio station in Australia, they got paid to pull silly stunts to draw audiences.
The fun only lasted for a few …

Why interviews are less about what you know and more about how you present yourself.
Years ago, I sat in on a media training session in while I was a working at Burson-Marsteller in New York City. The client was the head of mergers and acquisitions for a Wall Street investment bank. He was handsome, clever, and as confident as one would expect. The coaching was intended to help him handle media interviews and analysts’ calls with ease. It should have been a no-brainer. But about an hour into the session, after …