Take of the Week:
It’s been a minute since we had a Take of the Week, let’s see if we can change that this week. Anna Rice had an interesting take on media training, give it a read.

She’s on point with her “vendor vibes” idea. I advise clients that reporters want sources, not spokespeople, and that’s a fine line to walk.

However, that doesn’t mean media training isn’t a necessary part of the game. I also tell clients to think about how many times an artist like Bruce Springsteen has performed “Born to Run” over his career. He needs to deliver the same words with the same enthusiasm every single time, and media training helps build that muscle. Practicing media interviews is also a useful exercise to make sure that those speaking with press know the rules of the road (i.e. on vs. off the record, potential pitfalls, etc.). People should still be who they are, but going through some reps won’t necessarily result in a vendor robot, it’ll result in better odds of key messages coming through and an overall successful interview.

I’d love to hear from others on this, please chime in on LinkedIn!

Bonus Take of the Week:
Ran Peled had a provocative take that PR people don’t “earn” coverage for news announcements like funding rounds, the companies themselves did. The answer lies somewhere in the middle, and the complement each other. Yes, it’s true that a company wouldn’t get that feature story without the funding that the company itself earned; but, that company also likely doesn’t get that story without the PR person’s help in doing so. Even an announcement like a $30M funding round can be hard to break through and it is difficult to get a reporter to cover it.

Chuckles of the Week
Ryan’s Jeopardy! take brought a smile to my face, and it also seems like a good problem to have!

Loveable’s Head of Comms Senka had a great take on the text we get when we’re the head of comms.

Resource of the Week:
I’ve posted takes here about the positives of paywalls, but sometimes they really can be an obstacle. Lifehacker’s Joel Cunningham dropped a story on the best tools to bypass paywalls, check it out.

The Rest of the Takes:
We all agree that trade media moves the needle, Dustin Siggins had a strong take on why it’s more important than top tier media.

Yury wrote about how good communications compound

Kara Silverman dove into the question, what will earning more press actually fix for a company?

Patrick received more than 100 pitches, and he wrote back to each of them with individual feedback, interesting stuff in here

Bridgette dished some tea on how to become a reporter’s go-to source

That’s it for this week’s takes, thanks for reading.

-Brian
https://www.linkedin.com/in/bkramer/