Winning with the News Media: A Self-Defense Manual When You're the Story - Paperback

by Clarence Jones (Author)

The new, updated edition of a classic guidebook. Reviewers have called it the "bible" for news media relations. Written by Clarence Jones, one of the nation's most honored investigative reporters, who left reporting to become a news media consultant and on-camera coach when this book was first published. Jones helps you understand how the news media operate and how to cope with them. A former investigative reporter in both newspapers and television, the author shares his candid, critical assessment of where the media are, and where they're going. The book is divided into three sections -- Media Strategy, Media Skills, and Inside the Media. It includes basic public relations guidelines, as well as extensive, step-by-step recommendations when you've been targeted by the media, or need to get your story out. Interview and news conference tips, crisis management, libel and privacy law are all explored in great detail. How to safely talk to reporters off-the-record. Explanations of how they'll edit you and what you can do to make the editing more accurate. Full text of the code of ethics reporters and editors claim to live by, and what you can do when they break their own rules. Four chapters cover on-camera skills and performance. How to deal with stage fright, how to sit, getting your mind in the right space for the interview. What to wear. How to craft a quote they'll use, and use exactly as you said it. How to judge media advice from your lawyer. The battle for money and power that is now raging between print, television, and the Internet. The book includes extensive case studies of people and corporations who were caught in the media spotlight. How and why they succeeded or failed in defending themselves. Lessons that can be applied to your next crisis. How to become the "expert on call" by creating an inexpensive webcam studio so you're available 24/7 for instant interviews networks and local stations can include in their stories.

Author Biography

This is the updated, 9th Edition of a classic handbook first published in 1983. Author Clarence Jones knows what he's writing about. As a legendary investigative reporter for 30 years in both newspapers and TV, he said he wrote this book "to teach people like you how to cope with SOBs like me." Then he left reporting to become a nationally-recognized news media consultant, crisis manager, on-camera coach. Nobody in America has comparable experience, insight, and know-how. He began as a full-time reporter for the Florida Times-Union while he was earning his journalism degree at the University of Florida. Nine years later, as one of the nation's most promising young journalists, he was granted a Nieman Fellowship at Harvard University. He wound up his 16-year newspaper career as Washington correspondent for The Miami Herald. Then he went to WHAS-TV in Louisville, Kentucky to work under cover, investigating law enforcement corruption there. Eight months of street surveillance and smuggling a lunchbox camera into illegal bookie joints for his daily visits led to two documentaries that gained immediate national attention. After two years in Louisville, he returned to Miami as investigative reporter for WPLG-TV, specializing in organized crime and government corruption. His work there earned three duPont-Columbia Awards (television's equivalent of the Pulitzer Prize). No other reporter for a local TV station has ever won the award three times. His work in Miami also won four Emmys and the prestigious Robert F. Kennedy Award. While he was still reporting, he also taught broadcast journalism for five years as an adjunct professor at the University of Miami. He published his memoirs in 2013 - They're Gonna Murder You - War Stories From My Life At The News Front. Reviewers of that book say it reads like a murder mystery or spy novel. His other books include Sailboat Projects - Clever Ideas and How to Make Them - For a Pittance, Webcam Savvy, and Shortcuts for Windows PCs. He frequently publishes magazine articles showing how to make modifications he invented for his sailboat.