A photo I took last weekend with a Nikon D40X. Okay, I'm still learning!

Photos taken during the holidays exceed in numbers those taken at the most photographed location in the World... Disney World in Orlando, Fl. But capturing the magic of the holidays is often no easy feat.

A candlelit dinner just wouldn't be the same if photographed with a flash. And photos for business collateral (e.g. brochures, holiday cards and web advertisements) can leave customers or audiences with a bad impression if they're poorly shot.

So, how does one shoot wonderful holiday photos?  Don't ask me. Ask the experts.  Below you'll find links to a collection of the best tips I've yet seen. Whether you're a professional luring an audience or someone hoping to capture memories around a dining table, these tips are spot on. 

My thanks to my friend and upcoming hot photographer Ashley Pendergraft for sharing.  Enjoy, and Happy Holidays.

Top ten tips for better holiday photos (BetterPhoto.com)

16 Digital Photography Tips for Christmas (DPS)

Holiday Photography 101: Tips for Capturing Great Family Photos (ABC News)

Christmas bokeh in 60 seconds (PhotoTodo)

Must-Get Christmas Pictures Before the Tree Comes Down! (KevinandAmanda.com)

Holiday Photos: The Top 10 Most-Fun-Ever Ideas (PhotoJojo)

Courtesy: Newsweek

REPORT OILED BIRDS: 1-866-557-1401 (National Audubon Society)

Health Information

NOAA: Tar ball Health

NOAA: Deepwater Horizon Response, Latest Info

CNN: Beach Conditions (Accurate as of 6/10/10)

Louisiana Releases Info On Exposure – 70+ Illnesses so far

Beach/Coastal Conditions

Florida Tourism Industry Marketing Corp.

Alabama Gulf Coast CVB

Mississippi Div. of Tourism

Louisiana Office of Tourism

Volunteerism

Alabama Coastal Foundation

National Audubon Society

Volunteer Response Center (National Audubon Society)

Qualified Community Responders (BP)

Louisiana State Site

Mississippi State Site

Florida State Site

Alabama State Site

Mississippi Commission for Volunteer Service

U.S. Fish and Wildlife Service

Tri-State Bird Rescue

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Appearing nearly paper thin, Bloom Energy's fuel cell which comprises the Bloom Box

“In the world of energy, the Holy Grail is a power source that’s inexpensive and clean with no emissions,” began CBS’s Lesley Stahl, touching off a frenzy of media attention – a firestorm seemingly as controlled and well calculated as the technology itself. The 60-Minutes segment would be the beginning, the launching pad for a PR blitz that feeds on mystery, intrigue and our insatiable need to learn the secrets of the Bloom Box.

The Bloom Box, a futuristic miniature power plant, has captivated our attention and set our minds racing. A couple of small cubes no larger than a loaf of bread are able to power a U.S. home according to Bloom Box creator Bloom Energy. Group multiple cubes, or fuel cells, together and you can power entire corporate centers. It's already happening.

Bloom Boxes deployed at Ebay headquarters

At almost $800,000 for an entire "energy server," these Bloom Boxes already adorn the lawns of major American companies: FedEx, Wal-Mart, Staples, Ebay, Bank of America and Cox Enterprises – each of them going “off the grid” to produce their own energy. But how? We all really have no idea. And that’s just fine in the evolving world of new public relations.

The media campaign surrounding last week’s official launch of the Bloom Box is the genesis of Outcast Communications, a small firm barely 13 years young with offices in San Francisco and New York. And while short on information, the Outcast strategy is long on results so far. “It’s about seeing the world as what it can be and not what it is,” the exuberant and wildly joyful Bloom CEO KR Sridhar said as he led a fascinated Lesley Stahl through his laboratory.  “It works!” But Sridhar is not alone.

Today more than 100 companies and research firms are building fuel cells and several have found similar success. A Business Week article reveals that Sprint is gobbling up hydrogen-based fuel cell patents at record speed with the idea of deploying the technology at cell phone towers. Bloom Energy may have hit the media stratosphere, but the race is tighter than we now understand. To win this race and create the appearance of dominance, at least for now, Bloom Energy had to strike first, before its competitors.

Bloom Energy’s PR machine isn’t addressing the staunch criticism coming from some like Sam Jaffe of IDC Energy Insights, an energy consultancy. “While the Bloom gurus have handled the PR process masterfully, they forgot to mention a few other things about their Bloom boxes,” Jaffe writes in a blog post entitled “Four Things Bloom Energy Forgot to Tell the World.” Citing drawbacks including real questions on efficiency and environmental impact, he says Bloom “garnered an inordinate amount of the Internet and the media’s attention.” And it should have.

Bloom Energy's CEO KR Sridhar

While Jaffe may be right on, the truth is no one is talking about efficiency or supposed environmental impact. Bloom Energy launched its box in the middle of a cold winter amid high energy bills - maybe one reason we’re talking about the idea of creating our own energy in our back yards. We’re talking about the prospect of going “off the grid.” And we’re talking about the Bloom Box.

The folks over at Outcast Communications have thoroughly succeeded. They’ll just have to keep the box blooming over time. Thomas Alva Edison likely saw the same challenge.

Not 130 years ago Edison burned his first light bulb. History suggests his technology was not the best. It was not the most efficient. And those bulbs weren't cheap to illuminate. But his bulbs were first. And in just a year Edison was powering up 10,300 bulbs for more than 500 customers nightly in Lower Manhattan. Those bulbs busted the competition and from them grew the mega-corporation we now know as General Electric.

GE's got fuel cells too. But different from Bloom Energy, GE's PR machine is still quiet.

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Southwest is now in a race to apologize to Smith after airline staff ejected him from a flight on Saturday because of his size. Smith, who had apparently purchased two seats on one flight for himself, opted to accept a stand-by ticket on an earlier flight. Problem is there was only one stand-by seat. Smith boarded. Smith was removed. Smith began Tweeting.

"Dude, I know I'm fat," Smith said according to a CNN article. "That's not why I was truly thrown off that plane because I fit perfectly in the seat… I am not fat enough to eject off a Southwest flight."

Telling Twitter followers he had no problem sitting in the seat, buckling his seat belt and lowering his armrest, an angry Smith is vowing he’ll never fly on Southwest again. The resulting flood of traffic and responses to Southwest prompted at least a temporary shut-down of customer generated comments on the Airline’s blog.  And if the fat issue weren’t enough, the airline’s general reputation is being called to question by a contingent of Smith supporters. Alas, a public relations nightmare for the discount air carrier usually found to have few consumer complaints by comparison.

According to numerous published reports, Southwest says it will “use this experience in [its] customer service program when training… employees on the correct way to apply the policy." The policy is simple and requires "passengers that cannot fit safely and comfortably in one seat to purchase an additional seat while traveling.”

"If a customer cannot comfortably lower the armrest and infringes on a portion of another seat, a customer seated adjacent would be very uncomfortable and a timely exit from the aircraft in the event of an emergency might be compromised if we allow a cramped, restricted seating arrangement," the airline said according to CNN.

The message is made clear in a QandA now published on the airline’s web site which answers the question “What is the definitive gauge for a Customer of size?” Answer: “The armrest is the definitive gauge for a Customer of size. It serves as the boundary between seats and measures 17 inches in width. Customers who are unable to lower both armrests and/or who compromise any portion of adjacent seating should proactively book the number of seats needed prior to travel.”

In all Southwest’s apology-making, what exactly is the airline apologizing for? Fat passengers? Small seats? The policy itself? Or is Southwest worried about the reach of a celebrity using Twitter?

In the minds of a largely compassionate, commonsensical public concerned about obesity as well as airline comfort, who will win? Whoever stops Tweeting sooner.

The truth in just 48 hours ought to have Toyota scrambling. A “USA Today” headline proclaims “Toyota recalls will cost owners in lower resale values.” “It's not just about the models being recalled. The bad reputation would permeate the entire line. Safety problems could wind up costing Toyota owners a bundle,” writes USA’s Chris Woodyard.  And as of this morning, we can now add Prius hybrids and some Lexus HS250h models to yet another recall for brake problems.  Oh, and the Corolla, it was announced today, may soon be recalled due to control issues while driving. More bad news seeminlgy answered with a more unbelievable response from Toyota.

All the while as Toyota continues its string of global apologies for mishandling the safety concerns for months, the auto giant is beginning a new war on those that provide the public with information. Question is how far will Toyota go? And how much more damage will the automaker create for itself.

ABC News is now reporting “Toyota dealers in five southeast states have pulled their commercials off ABC TV local affiliates.”  Why?  “Excessive stories on the Toyota issues," says Marcia Owens-Reder, senior vice-president at 22Squared, the Atlanta advertising agency that handles the account. Saying she "tried" to talk the dealers out of the giant ad-blackout, Owens-Reder tells the affected ABC stations according to ABC, "We have counseled the client on the pros and cons of this, and ultimately it was their decision to make." And what a poor decision it was.

The first hint at the cloud of controversy growing around Toyota came some seven months ago when a Lexus ES350 carrying a California Highway Patrolman and his family accelerated inexplicably and couldn’t be stopped.  Everyone aboard the Lexus was killed when it struck another vehicle and careened down an embankment.  Similar stories of runaway Toyotas would follow, in fact more than 2,000 of them.  And Toyota chose silence, denying any problem existed. Toyota’s deference to itself would allow a few familiar voices to fill its silent void.

ABC News' Chief Investigative Correspondent Brian Ross seemed to lead a small chorus of journalists seeking answers. Joined by a few newspapers of record in America, the reporters pressed on for answers at a time when the nation was preoccupied economically and its government seemed only remotely interested in taking any action to advance the truth.

That journalism has now prompted official congressional hearings. Just hours away, the U.S. House Committee on Oversight and Government Reform won’t just turn its microscope toward Toyota - but also toward the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration (NHTSA), which regulators fear failed in addressing complaints of sudden acceleration. "There appears to be a growing body of evidence that neither Toyota nor NHTSA have identified all the causes of sudden unintended acceleration in Toyota vehicles," a committee memo to lawmakers says. "Moreover, there is substantial evidence that remedies such as redesigned floor mats have failed to solve the problem."

From a strategic communications perspective, could there possibly be a more fitting, more perfect time for Toyota to cooperate beneath the illumination of full transparency?  No. The time is now. Heck, the time has long passed. So, how did Toyota’s public relations machine become so broken?

Generally speaking, a decade ago public relations existed a world away from marketing. PR folks wooed the media with press releases and wined-and-dined government regulators. And the marketing arm served principally to create and purchase advertising. Now, these once distinct and different communication areas are not so distinct and different.  Fail in one area, you fail in the other.  Author David Meerman Scott says it’s because of the internet.

Scott, author of the runaway book, “The New Rules of Marketing & PR,” tells Ryan Deal today, "When company executives refuse to talk, people imply that they have something to hide. So by refusing to engage for weeks, Toyota lost goodwill with people that was built up over a generation. Sometimes a well placed and timely apology is all that is needed. But going dark (silent) is never good policy in an always-on, Twitter-centric world." Toyota went dark alright, but Toyota, whether it likes it or not, is still communicating.

Toyota had been denying there was even a problem.  Toyota has blacked-out its ABC television advertising across the southeast U.S. And now Toyota is expressing anger at the media. Toyota has failed to connect with its worried customers in any meaningful way and has no online, social media presence whatsoever. And Toyota has lost its pole position within the blogosphere and trade media where trust is essential to preserving an audience.

Toyota is communicating nothing but questons: Why didn’t Toyota seek honesty earlier? And why is Toyota angry about honesty now?

Those questions will be answered – just not by Toyota, nor its runaway PR machine.

Altered Wachovia Logo as it appears on Facebook anti-fan page.

It should have been the simplest kind of call into Wachovia Bank’s customer service center. But it wasn’t. Heather Lynn, a 21-year-old art student in Virginia, contributed $10 to an ongoing relief effort in earthquake-ravaged Haiti. And she used her Wachovia debit card to do it. Yet when her transaction posted, a 3% “international service fee” had been deducted from her contribution.  The quake victims would see less money. What?

"I called customer service to ask if they were waiving fees like Visa and MasterCard did for Haiti relief funds, but the unsympathetic customer service representative said 'No,'" Lynn told The Huffington Post. "I just don't understand how a bank can make a profit from a tragedy, let alone get away with it."

And from there the seed for a looming public relations disaster was planted. And Wachovia’s parent company, Wells Fargo, would soon appear to possess a misguided surplus of water and highly-enriched fertilizer.

Furious at the abrupt decision Lynn took her plight to the internet, setting up a quite unsavory page on Facebook.  Entitled “Wachovia = Fail,” the page not only details Lynn’s profound disappointment but also serves as a call to action. “Wachovia needs to be held accountable! They need to either refund the money or donate whatever profits they accrued to Haiti relief funds!” the site says while Lynn encourages fans (totaling 3,008 as of the time of this blog posting) to contact their elected representatives and reconsider banking with Wachovia. “The internet is our last hope to equal the playing field,” writes fan Fawzi Momani.

Enter the bank’s garden hose and that fertilizer.

"We have given $100,000 to the American Red Cross, and on January 19 we pledged an additional $250,000 to support the non-profits in Florida that are mobilizing the relief efforts," Wells Fargo spokesman Micheal Klosterman told The Huffington Post. "We decided that donating a sum of money would be quicker and more beneficial than waiving transaction fees because the funds would get to the people quicker. It would take the equivalent of $35 million in transactions to raise the amount of money we actually donated."

Wachovia and parent company Wells Fargo missed the proverbial boat. At real issue was not whether the bank was somehow profiting from donations to Haiti. It wasn’t whether transaction fees are simply the real cost of getting the donations to where they belong. And it certainly did not center on what Wachovia is doing to aid the quake’s victims. Yet those are the issues Wachovia endeavored to answer. And in doing so they ignored reality.

The principal, guiding issue for Lynn and her growing list of irritated Facebook supporters centers on their money – not Wachovia’s.  It’s all about anger and disappointment. From a public relations perspective, these issues of emotion cannot be solved with facts. They’re solved with action that seeks to quell. And if the corporate response is on target, the public’s image of the corporation could also actually be improved in the process. With the ever profitable Wells Fargo $25 billion taxpayer bailout still fresh on the minds of most, the bank might have taken a lesson from Toyota’s innumerable mistakes of late.

Like Wells Fargo, Toyota’s public relations machine failed to answer the real dilemma facing consumers – fear amid increasing reports of runaway gas pedals. Toyota answered by initially denying the problem existed. The PR machine then retooled into an evolving process including studies, repair programs, recalls – and ultimately PR disaster – all because the auto giant failed to address the real concern, fear.

Paramount to successful communication with any audience is mere understanding. Before speaking, communicators must understand what they’re saying, what it will mean, and most importantly – how it will be understood. Quite simply – what’s the real concern here?

Whether you’re attached to a mega-bank, an auto manufacturer or a small business, you might learn from Wachovia/Wells Fargo and Toyota. One theme here is constant:

Rather than cultivate their own firmly planted trees, these corporations opted to turn their garden hoses and fertilizer elsewhere. And if you’ve ever used fertilizer, you already know a little goes a long way.

In a book just published (January 5, 2010) entitled "The Death and Life of American Journalism: The Media Revolution that Will Begin the World Again," professor Bob McChesney and journalist John Nichols blame the digital revolution for what has become a rapid disappearance of American journalism. Nichols, who says he blogged before there was a blog, makes clear what’s going down the digital drain as newspaper employees are given pink slips at the rate of 1,000 a month. “There is absolutely no evidence, and I want to underline that, no evidence that what we’re losing is being replaced on the net,” he told David Brancaccio, host of PBS’s NOW television program. “The core of the problem is the papers that are staying open – they’re doing massive layoffs. You cannot maintain journalism… when you are laying-off literally dozens and hundreds of reporters.  If this keeps going, we’re going to create the perfect model for a propaganda state.”

In recent months we’ve witnessed the death of the Seattle Post-Intelligencer and the Rocky Mountain News. I’d actually forgotten about the closure of all national bureaus of the Washington Post until I attempted to pitch a story recently. In an article last November Post Executive Editor Marcus Brauchli said, "The fact is we can effectively cover the rest of the country from Washington.” Not so says book co-author Bob McChesney on PBS’s NOW.

“Journalism requires journalists,” McChesney said. “It requires editors. It requires fact checkers. It requires institutional resources to protect the news operation from interference, be it corporate or governmental, so it can be independent. And there’s no evidence that this technology, the internet, will provide that at all.”

There seems a race to repeat, reproduce or even copy content on the internet – and there is little or no effort to develop original content. Authors Nichols and McChesney cite a recent Pew Research study in Baltimore pointing to some 96% of all original content on the web as originating within “old media” and then simply spread around like butter on a slice of bored bread. 

This argument is made patently clear in Ken Auletta’s new book “Googled: The End of the World as We Know It.” Auletta chronicles Google’s increasingly tighter grasp on information, much of it copyrighted, and the effect on traditional media including newspapers and television. And Auletta makes a strong case that Google’s non-traditional, easy advertising is driving those dollars away from traditional media.

As a journalist for 12 years, I’ve come to witness the decline of journalism in all mediums. But as a product of television journalism, I have come to respect the real power of video. And much like newspapers, television relies on advertising revenue. And now I find myself asking whether authors Nichols and McChesney might be right? Is journalism going extinct? Are we headed toward a propaganda state? And to save it all, do we really need another bailout?

“We’re a couple hundred years into this experiment,” John Nichols tells PBS’s NOW. “Maybe we ought to pull the brake and have a national discussion about ‘how do we have a real democracy?’ How do we have a country that isn’t a mirror of the colonial states that we broke away from?”

“I really do believe that Americans are hungry for news.  We’ve just been starved for too long.”

Watch the PBS NOW interview with Bob McChesney and John Nichols here.

Visit the "Newspaper Death Watch" here.

The Twitter feeds were centering on the typical: Someone is dancing, someone is buying a new pair of designer jeans, and someone else is listening to music. And then the music stopped, quite literally replaced by a heart-rattling, violent shaking. Twitter stood still, at least for a moment until the hell-on-earth shaking somewhere began to reach and to touch everywhere.

Within moments of the crumbling of Port-au-Prince, Haiti, the tweeting began again. “WE NEED HELPPPPPPPPPPPP!!!!,” seemed to scream Carel Pedre, a Haitian DJ. An apparent mother as indicated by her photo, Haiti1, later tells followers “if anyone calls and i dnt pick up.srry just leave a text message or voicemail..cause im 2 crush and crying out loud..so u wont understand me.” 

Oh that we understand. That we feel.

Before television images, before newspaper accounts, before the U.S. Geological Survey supposed the damage, before one gear of the traditional media machine began to turn – there was social media. And like a cell phone on 9/11 scores of dazed victims were using social media to reach out. Only the audience was much larger. A sleeping giant, social media awakened to something more than fashion and music.

We’ve seen this rouse of relevance or of citizen journalism before. We have read, and through pictures witnessed last year’s horror during the earthquake in China. And during the recent unrest in Iran, a cadre of U.S. officials quietly pleaded with Twitter engineers to delay scheduled maintenance. Engineers agreed and stopped the dimming of the last remaining light of truth after the Iranian government shut down swaths of the World Wide Web and ejected international reporters. 

If power and strength are born of information, then social media is its newest conduit. As boundaries are pushed, social media becomes increasingly established. 

Now is the quest to capitalize, dare I say monetize, on relevance.

In a move closely watched by media observers, Pepsi Co. has now officially abandoned its seat at a very expensive table – swapping its Super Bowl advertising for a social media mega-strike. Perhaps borrowing from Google’s mantra of making the world a better place and never being “evil,” Pepsi is launching the Pepsi Refresh Project – a multi-million dollar grant give-away aimed at making “a positive impact in the community.” Of Pepsi’s mad dash to the social media sphere, blogger Geoff Northcott at AKQA in London says, "Instead of spending that money on one big moment, [Pepsi is] spreading it into a participatory experience that will last through the year, hopefully creating real and lasting impact in the world as a result." 

There is a catch, however. That impact hinges on social media. Pepsi’s grants will be awarded on numbers of votes and so surely any result will depend on Pepsi’s reach. Pepsi is now hoping to feast at a new table where the menus are full of the numbers of social media users – numbers now too many to ignore.

In a recent blog, digital marketing and ecommerce clearinghouse Econsultancy.com tallied those increasing numbers. According to Econsultancy’s statistics: Social network and blog usage now trumps that of personal email. Twitter alone is seeing an estimated 20M unique visitors each month. Six-year-old Flickr now hosts 3.6B images. Seventy-seven percent of all internet users regularly read blogs. LinkedIn has surpassed 45M users and some 80 percent of companies surveyed say they plan to use it almost exclusively for new employee recruitment. And Facebook users… well, who can keep up?

Last week a New York Times article pushed entrepreneurs toward new thinking. Author Jay Goltz declared “Social media is not a fad. Hire a professional or look into it enough to give you some insights. Things change quickly. This is one of the public faces of your company. Do not leave it to your 17-year-old nephew, even if he is ‘gifted.’” 

That gifted nephew may soon come with credentials.

Birmingham City University in central England is offering a master’s degree in social networking. Elon University in North Carolina has a master’s program in interactive media with user-generated content. And at the University of Southern California, students can obtain a master’s in online communities. But will the curriculum answer the real defining question all communicators ought to be asking – How do we really make it relevant?

Like beauty, relevance is in the eye of the beholder. Connecting that eye successfully to a series of keystrokes or a photograph or even a campaign is no easy task.

Enter emotion.

Relevance is really emotion. People anywhere listen to facts. They respond to emotion. The short format of most social media platforms makes conveyance of emotion difficult if not impossible.

Let us again consider the tweeters of Haiti: relevancy quest accomplished.

Now it’s up to the professionals.

RD|PR media training in Microsoft Room at KPMG headquarters, Silicon Valley

Interacting with the news media can be exciting. It can even be addictive. And for so many people, the mere prospect of being interviewed by a reporter can be downright terrifying. As an answer, many will turn to media training. Sounds like an excellent idea, right? Yes. But do your homework.

Whether it be America’s short attention span or whether there are simply too many people with something to say, one thing is clear: we’re all being given less time to say it. Critics call the phenomenon sound bite journalism, a way of producing the news where the reporter speaks most of the time and you, the subject of the story, end up on the cutting room floor. 

In the 1980’s the typical length of a sound bite was about 15 seconds. In the 1990’s, about 10 seconds. And today, the typical length of a sound bite is less than 6 seconds. And the constraint goes far beyond broadcast media and is slowly extending to newspapers where editors are shrinking quotations. This new reality means you’ve got far less time to make your point. And the time you do have is precious. You’ve just got to use it wisely.

Your point does matter. You’ll just need to sell it. Reporters come from newsrooms, which regardless of size or location, all operate principally the same – and for the same purpose: to inform the public while increasing profits. But newsrooms are being affected by the economy much as you and your associates are. Unfortunately, many news organizations are seeing less and less profit. That is leading to fewer and fewer people to assemble the daily news. And that’s leaving those left very busy. There is no time for long-winded responses. And there is no room for error. Preparation is essential.

Too often the tension associated with a media encounter is born of fear we might say the wrong thing, fear we might make matters worse, or even fear of not knowing what to say. Overcoming these fears might mean placing your trust, or that of your client, as well as your bottom line in the hands of a media trainer.

In today’s economy, one wrought with layoffs and downsizing, many jobless communicators have become instant media trainers, purporting to provide you and your client(s) the tools and techniques essential to effective communication. And so many trainers are simply not qualified.

Effective communication with the news media is a learned behavior. While there are simple and effective methods which you can easily employ to arrive at communications success, you’ll need a media trainer with experience and credentials. Here, you’ll find a review of the questions you ought to be asking before entrusting your critical messages with just anyone.

Demand more, demand better.

If your prospective media trainer suggests hauling principals or executives into a room while he/she blathers on about encounters with journalists or being a journalist, run. Media training is more than lectures. It is an interactive experience of immersion. There are role-playing scenarios. There are group activities. And you ought to be provided a clear, concise plan on paper revealing just how your trainer intends on “performing.” Media training is performing.

Ask for references.

Any trainer worth their salt will be happy to provide references – real people you may call to inquire on the process, the trainer's talent, and the overall result of the training experience. Without violating any confidentiality agreements, these people should be willing to explain why they sought media training and how it helped them. They should tell you whether the trainer “performed” as a communicator with principals, executives and everyday participants - or if the trainer seemed timid or nervous or if the training seemed “cloned.”

Avoid a cloned program.

Your potential media trainer could come equipped with a resume and references a mile long – useless information if he/she is not tailoring the program to you and your needs. If your prospective media trainer answers your initial RFP in a matter of minutes, run. This is a sound indicator this trainer will be utilizing the same program or technique used previously dozens or hundreds of times. Your program should absolutely be tailored to you and your needs. After all you or your client couldn’t possibly be preparing for the same interview as everyone else the trainer has coached, could you? There is more to media training than “blocking and bridging” and if your prospective trainer hinges their whole program on those techniques, again run.

You deserve more attention and you can get it.

Media training is more than mere media coaching. It should be memorable, even fun. Your trainer should be knowledgeable – not just in terms of the media – but also with you or your client’s product, service, dilemma or crisis. Your trainer should be willing to help craft your key messages, should you desire, and there should be no additional cost. If the trainer is unwilling or unable to help in this area, then you’ve stumbled on another sound indicator you should run.

A final note.

Contrary to belief, reporters are usually not “out to get you.” They’re not approaching the interview with the specific aim of ruining your reputation, damaging a family business, or portraying an industry itself in a negative light. They are, however, looking for a good story. Unfortunately, good news typically centers on the bad. When things go right, when systems work correctly news is not made. Few would watch the news each day or read a newspaper if all they were told is “no planes have crashed, no mining tunnels collapsed, or no one was sickened by a food borne illness.”

At some point, at some time, chances are you or your client will be called upon by the media. Be ready.

Spend ten minutes on Google and you’ll find there are all sorts of people working in cities across the U.S. and claiming to be able to teach you how to get any message on the television news, easily and for free. While the reviews are mixed, one thing is for certain: “free” begins only after you’ve invested upwards of $1,000 to participate in the program. And believe me, as a reporter for 12 years, there is no guarantee the media, in their fishbowl, will actually bite.

Before you pack away your fishing rod, let us consider your bait. There are many ways to lure a reporter or editor’s attention.  You’ve just got to be savvy and you’ve got to be honest. And you’ve got to make it easy.

Your point does matter. You’ll just need to sell it. Newsrooms are being affected by the economy much as you and your clients are. Unfortunately, many news organizations are seeing less and less profit. That is leading to fewer and fewer people to assemble the daily news. And that’s leaving those left very busy. Before you contact the media, do your homework and make your time worth theirs. Following are some brief tips that might help you successfully communicate with the media before you communicate with your public.

Make it easy.

Capitalize on the reporter’s need for time and do some of the research first. Make the information you provide clear, concise and devoid of any flowery writing. Provide the reporter or editor with web sites providing information on your activity, program or initiative. And if there’s an element of controversy, that’s all the better. Point the reporter or editor toward your adversaries. They’re sure to track them down anyway.

Make it visual.

A reporter’s interest is piqued when something is happening other than a mere interview availability. You would be amazed to learn how many PR pitchers will contact the media in hopes of getting their client on television, but in the end fail in their attempts because they provided nothing of visual interest to a reporter working principally in pictures. Imagine you’re actually the reporter or editor accepting your call. Would you interview someone pushing the newest widget if you were permitted no access to the factory and could not see the widget? Sounds like a great newspaper story, unless you get creative. What about utilizing the older, obsolete widget and treating the interview as an “imagine when” piece? What about suggesting a feature on a person whose life would greatly benefit through the new widget? And that gets to the next point.

Make it emotional.

Plainly put, facts are facts and they’re important. But people don’t remember them. They remember emotion or how they, the viewers, felt while consuming the story. Imagine a local charity is using the media in an attempt to gain donations for Christmas. Wouldn’t you, as a viewer, be more inclined to donate if you were introduced to a family who might benefit from your money?

Make it relevant.

I like to think of this as “striking when the iron’s hot.” Suppose your client is attempting to market a new plant seed requiring just one initial watering and then it’s set for the season. It’s a decent story any day and would play well near the end of a news program when few are watching. But if you consider relevancy, you might seek out markets stricken with drought and full of viewers irritated at outdoor watering restrictions and regulations. Suddenly, you’re pitching the lead story.

Make it honest.

This is by far the most important of rules to consider when pitching the media. Fail to do this and your pitch could wind up on the desk of the investigative unit.