Hillside Media Training

Tears again on the TV sofa this week  as BBC Midlands journo, Ray Gosling, makes his amazing confession that he smothered his young, gay lover to death because he was in pain from AIDS. It has sent the euthanesia v murder debate into hyperdrive.

The rights and wrongs of this confession will grind on this week and it’s no surprise that the police are now investigating.  But what a bizarre media moment??

It is extraordinary that people choose the most public of platforms as though they want the most public of humiliation to assuage any guilt. Catharsis or what?

As Gosling this morning plunged into his public hand-wringing  BBC’s Mr Nice Guy cuddily Bill Turnbill looked increasingly uncomfortable with the mea culpa performance. Gosling for a TV journo seemed ill at ease with the surroundings too. It was strange seeing someone who was meant to be at ease with live TV make all the classic mistakes: shaking the presenter’s hands, thanking everyone profusely and leaping up off the sofa at the end without waiting demurely until ‘off-camera’ to be unclipped from the microphone.

Desperation had set in as he completed his self-enforced round of media confessionals. One almost expected to see the ‘boys in blue’ waiting for him in the wings.

You’ve got to hand it to him. It’s great watching an old pro in action. I had forgotten until Nick Robinson mentioned it in his intro that Mandelson is a pro. He is an ex TV Producer. As the man in charge of central casting he correctly made the call and had Tony Blair appointed. He has lost none of his relish for the game. And the TV interview for politicians is just a game. He still comes across as a wily old fox. His delivery is slow and measured giving him time to control his performance and he is master of the hesitation. He has charm in spades and undeniable steel. He talks throughout. All the questions seem like interruptions. But he gives himself away. For example when Robinson is challenging him on the actual numbers of people helped by the mortgage rescue scheme, Mr Smooth talks over him and Robinson persists and says the figure is only 6 families. Mr Smooth concedes the point” Score your point” he says. If ever there was a give away remark that we are watching a game in play. This was it.

 But for those of us pros on the production side, Nick Robinson can be seen to be relaxing half way through when he knows he has his man cornered. Loud and clear Robinson challenges with “You talk of “rebalancing”, “constraints” “readjustment”…..Why don’t you talk of “CUTS”. He embellishes it so that the point is not lost on us viewers. The reply “I‘ll use my language…….” just proves, as if we needed it, that for Mr Smooth this is just another game. Politicians of the old school have still not woken up to the audience beyond Westminster village. Robinson embroiders the point at length getting Brer Fox to drop his guard for a moment and repeat the planted negative –twice!  “I’m not frightened “ Mandelson replies twice but he still will not use the magic word “cut”. From then on watch the body language. For Robinson and for me it was game over!

To watch here’s the link http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b00lxwf3/Newsnight_28_07_2009/

The prime minister’s Unleashing Aspirations all-party report, released tomorrow, has apparently come up with the unastounding conclusion that  journalism has become an exclusive middle class profession.

Should we be surprised? A resounding NO echoes through the former annals of Fleet Street and every local newspaper newsroom.

With the demise of local papers, as blogged here, gone are the days when you could blag your way in at 16 and write your way up – backed with the training credentials of doing a  2 year block release course at a designated college with the National Council for the Training of Journalists (NCTJ) whose Proficiency Test was the only way to get ahead in the news game.

There were five such colleges in my time round the country and if you’d won a place on their full year entry course for which you had to have A levels and pass a challenging interview process, you knew you were on your way. I actually turned down a place at university because I’d been given one of these coveted places,  because I believed it was my passport into a highly competitive industry.

Sadly now, with papers closing, the only way in to journalism, it seems, is if you have a degree – and that still is very much a middle class preoccupation. So lo! It has become more and more a middle class job. 

We seem to have forgotten the whole power of learning on the job via apprecticeships and indentures, as my training programme was called when I joined my first paper on leaving Harlow Technical college with my first NCTJ requisistes. I had to complete 3 years of indentures and pass my finals – the Proficieny Test (equivalent now of a degree) to be a fully fledged senior journalist and then be free if I wanted to find another job. Until then I was tied – or indentured to that paper.

I often talk on how it was such a wonderful training ground. I learned so much working day to day on the job and then having that training backed with classroom support. Those who hadn’t done the full year pre-entry course worked the same way but did block-release courses whereby they’d return to college more frequently to complete the formal learning exercises.

It didn’t matter what your background, your education or family purse you could get a job on your own merit, and boy, you had to prove yourself, and work your way up. You didn’t need a degree, unless you wanted to break into the likes of the BBC and broadcast in general. And then it was very much a case of being white and Oxbridge to even open the White City door.

I bet even now if you want to break into the Beeb, who will soon have complete control of local journalism through its local webnews sites, you will need a degree – that will push the realms of being a journalist from a working class background further away.

Again as I’ve written here before we need to watch the death knell of local journalism – not just because its loss will have a frightening impact on local democracy but also because the local paper provided a fair, open and thorough training ground for healthy journalism all through the ranks.

Yes Andy Murray’s Wimbledon win was impressive but why wasn’t I glued to the set during the match? In fact I was driven to keep wandering out to find something else to do. There is a huge difference between what works on screen and what works in the flesh. Often some TV presenters you meet in the flesh are strangely plain but the camera loves them and they light the screen.

Poor old Murray is not blessed yet with on screen looks. He may be magnificent when you are actually there watching him in Centre Court but just why doesn’t he translate to the TV screen?

Like many people he or his PR team have not yet realised that any interview on radio and TV should be a managed, controlled performance. We producers are not looking for actors or automatons but real characters who look and sound passionate and enthusiastic. McEnroe and the other on air commentators can bleat on how great Murray is but we the audience can’t see it! When he speaks to the interviewer after the match, he breaks one of the cardinal rules of a good TV presence. Just look at his eye line. He looks away before he answers any question – the viewer interprets that as shifty or unsure. He has nervous tics which betray his unease even when he has just delivered a 3 straight set victory. For God’s sake, he should be on cloud 9.The adrenaline should still be flowing . But he scratches his head. He looks down. He even sounds defensive. Even more surprising, at the end of the interview when he thinks it’s all over his shoulders collapse and he appears awkward. He looks dare I say it –DEFEATED!

Come on Andy –  Today you were a winner. You need to look like one. What you need is some TV Training!!

I knew Michael Jackson had died within an hour of the ambulance being called to his LA Home, even though I lived thousands of miles away in the Southern English countryside. I probably knew the tragic news before his family.

Such is the bizarre immediacy that is called social networking.

My daughter called me to say she’d read it on Facebook and her friend had read it on Twitter. We all scrambled for real confirmation, cruising news websites and posting running commentaries on what we had found and how we felt. I’d started up a chat with a close friend in Vegas who had also heard. Someone from Thailand, Australia and Dubai all chipped in their emotions, news and suddenly favourite songs and moments were being shared.

We all plundered YouTube for clicks to send each other. It was amazing both YouTube and Facebook didn’t implode with the global frenetic activity that had sprung to life.

As in life in death Michael Jackson had claimed another first: the quickest news story to break round the world. And all care of social networking, leaving the traditional  news ‘leaders’, CNN, BBC and even news webpages of internet giants like AOL to play catch up. Interesting that Time Warner, parent of AOL, own TMZ, the showbiz site that broke the story first.

In all my years of journalism I have never seen anything like it. It gave me goosebumps, to be honest. This was phenomenal. I knew I was witnessing a whole new era of news.

And so PR and comms team must take note. Traditional media campaigns are, for all intent and purposes, dead. Everyone has been banging on for years about the global reach of social networking but it has been like a gentle paternal pat on the head by the big guys. It was patronisingly  known as ‘how to reach the youff audience’.

Today they must sit up. It is time to take account of this seismic shift in media power. This is nothing about youth any more – this is about how we are all talking, chatting, taking control of the information and news that we want in our lives and how we can influence and drive that content on to another plane of our choosing by adding our own touches of creativity, such as sharing music, film or memories.

Many commentators feel that Michael Jackson never grew up. He was  a boy-man star locked in a fantasy childhood dream. Well, sadly care of his early death, he has forced the world to recognise that the so-called new media is now all grown up and truly come of age.

The fact that you are reading this means you probably trawl the internet for much of your news.  If you are under 40 when was the last time you bought a national newspaper, actually put your hands in your pocket and dished out the 30p to 90p cover price rather than grab the freebie Metro at the local station?

And when was the last time you actually bought a copy of your local paper? Regional media is in a deep crisis and that spells a  huge problem for democracy. The double whammy of the current recession, resulting in falling ad revenues, and the ginormous impact of internet news is killing off one of democracy’s greatest watchdogs.

Newspapers across the globe are crashing and burning. America’s third oldest paper the Phildelphia Enquirer has filed for Chapter 11 and in the UK  60 regional titles have stopped their presses this year, resulting in more than 10 percent of the workforce being made redundant in the past six months.

People who’ve heard me talk enjoy learning about my first day as a junior on a local paper. I run through what can be a typical day: first up was an ‘extremely good’ murder from morning police calls, then a fire in Woolies in the High Street. After lunch it was a dose of Magistrates Court, reporting on everything from theft of a plastic toy car to serious sexual assault (I’d never come across the word ‘incest’ before), then a photostory of extremely large onions at the local farming show, wrapping up the day with the regular spot at the planning committee of the local district council.

It was fabulous training ground. At the age of 19 I learned many lessons and made many mistakes but more importantly I realised one very fundamental aspect, that all those bodies knew they would be reported on. They knew that their decisions or actions would be given coverage and that the local people would be able to see and read about it. The local journo’s presence, even a very junior one, kept them on their toes, even more so if that local journo sold the story to the nationals, the route that takes most news around the world.

Without the journalist sitting in court who will know how much magistrates have fined someone or who’s been sent down to prison? How will we be able to assess if this is fair or safe? How would stories like the recent police ‘waterboarding’ brutality of suspects in Enfield come to light? Who would know if a local council is allowing some monstrosity to be built by a beautiful nature park?

Your local newspaper is your local champion. Regional radio and TV do not have the same space or time, or staff to play with. In fact ITN is struggling to maintain its local commitment with most regional stations being shut down. [More of that in a later blog.]

Local radio in fairness is fulfilling much of the vacant role as your local watchdog, thanks to phone-ins and greater involvement from those listening.

Citizen journalism is on the growth especially with timely photos and videos of key events – but, sorry to all you fervent bloggers, you have not been trained, you are not edited by a fleet of subs who check over your copy to ensure its sane, legal, entertaining and unbiased.

The BBC is rapidly hoping to fill the slot with local pages – aimed at small communities, a move which is of great concern for businesses like the Daily Mail’s parent company, Associated Newspapers as it owns much of the regional press. It sees this as the state’s news body eating away at its commercial heart.

The project could be an interesting new voice on the local block  but it raises many questions. Who will be doing the reporting? Who will moderate for libel, accuracy etc? Who will decide content..or impartiality? The BBC trades heavily on its status as our guardian of impartiality but as it gains in power – its separate concern BBC Enterprises is a huge global commercial outfit – how will this last?

As you can see there many grey areas which we should all be questioning as part of the new Digital Britain. This is not just about losing the local chip wrapper- and this is not just about losing your local voice. This is a fundamental chip away at our nationwide democracy and in these increasingly state monitored times, is something we should all be fighting to maintain.

BBC’s excellent recent series on the art of public speaking wheeled in the great and good to discuss top tips which, to be honest, have rarely changed since the Ancient Greeks who called the whole process Rhetoric. I have to admit I didn’t get to see all the episodes but was impressed by the odd snippets I caught and recommend you follow the link  below for some great advice http://www.bbc.co.uk/speaker/improve/.

Alastair Campbell’s fascinating contribution on Persuasion, (not the Jane Austen variety!), shown here, at least hits the strategy spot when it comes to PR campaigns. We find that most clients at the start of interview training completely forget the need for strategy and don’t even ask themselves one simple question: Why are we doing this??? You’ve got to plan what you want your audience to think or do about your message, or why bother?? You need to know exactly what you want to say and plan a strategy for making this message come alive. Watch BBC presenter Kate Silverton’s contribution on story-telling for a few ideas.

We often play in our media coaching workshops with what makes a good story. Like Kate, everyone when first asked this question comes up with ‘narrative’,  i.e beginning/middle/end but it is far more than that. Your story-telling needs characters (make sure you are the good guys in the story!), a setting (where is this happening) and some action (what’s happening!). There are several other aspects but if nothing else you’ve got to grab the audience right at the start with a great hook, or grabber as US readers call it, and back this hook with colour, as Campbell calls it, in other words, the stunning powerful imagery you should be choosing to bring your story-telling alive.

Click on the link here to our Public Speaking page for more ideas.