The mind of a journalist: a course for PRs

A course for public relations people, corporate publishers, anyone looking to hire and work with a journalist.

Whether you want to use a journalist as a copywriter or trainer, or whether you want to work with them and wonder why they're so hostile on the phone, it's important to understand why they behave as they do and how they've been trained. If you need to work with journalists and want a productive professional life, this course is essential.

Course tutor: Guy Clapperton
Date: Monday 9 September, 2013
Time: 9.30am-12.30pm
Venue: LMG Training, Southwark, SE1 8NZ
Number of places: 10 max
Cost: £125 (+£25 VAT)

This course takes takes place in an IT suite

Do you work with journalists and need to know more about how they work and why they have such difficulty following a corporate brief? Why, when you ask them what questions they want to ask your client, they come out with one thing and then ask something completely different?

This course will tell you all of that and more. It starts from basics like the journalist's understanding of phrases like "written independently" and the work you may have to put in before approaching them; why they so often regard the words "brief" and "guideline" as interchangeable and how to make a working relationship function throughout.

This half-day course will look at the presuppositions the PR industry can make and where they go wrong - and how crossed wires can end up causing costly business errors.

It will cover:

• Independent journalism and corporate work: how journalists square the circle
• Why a journalist doesn't appear all that worried when you point to a typo in his/her text
• "Production" - a word with two meanings
• "Written independently" - what you say, what a journalist means
• The pre-briefing - what journalists tell you about the interview they've planned and why it's almost always different
• The hostile journalist on the phone
• Structuring the press release so it looks like news

This will be a practical course with role-played phone calls and writing exercises. Candidates will leave with a better understanding of journalists and how to work with us to make the best of every engagement - and how to manage client expectations.

About Guy Clapperton

Guy Clapperton has been a journalist since 1989 and a trainer since 2002. He has freelanced for the national press, trade press, is an occasional broadcaster and has published books.

His worst experiences almost always involve third parties with misinformed expectations of journalists - book this course and you won't be one of them!


Testimonials

'The section on engaging journalists as contractors was not that applicable to me, however I still found it interesting as it was something I hadn't considered before, and the resulting discussion was enlightening.' Andrew Connolly, communications and HR, www.duedil.com