PREPARING FOR AN INTERVIEW, 1

George Washington didn’t have to read about his flub on Twitter. There was no Facebook feed on JFK’s relationship with Marilyn Monroe. Bill Clinton’s press conference didn’t get parodied on the internet or get songified on YouTube...well not in 1997 at least. Lets face it, if you want to be a political figure now a days, you have to prepare 100 times more than your predecessors even 10 years ago. Abraham Lincoln had very few reporters to worry about if he said anything controversial during an interview or speech, and a limited audience to hear his message. These days, one mistake and 30 million people will hear about it within 30 minutes. If you want to avoid these mistakes that could doom you before your campaign even starts, you have to prepare. But how do you start to prepare?

KNOW THE PLATFORM

The first step in preparing for an interview is knowing what kind of interview you are giving. This is crucial because different types of interviews require different types of preparation. For a press conference, you will be asked questions by multiple media outlets, both print and TV. Usually these are fairly straight forward because the questions aren’t going to be in too much depth and you can pick the reporters you want to answer. It’s important to know if it’s a TV, radio, newspaper, magazine or blog interview. Every different interview type will produce different types of questions, levels of casualness and how prepared the reporter is and what they expect. For example, one on one press interviews with a national newspaper will more in depth and challenging because the reporter will ask more serious questions to test you; whereas a radio interview will be more casual, with shorter answers and more fluff. TV and Radio interviews will usually just be looking for sound bites, so the better something sounds the better off you’ll be.