"Get me on Oprah!"
I've heard that hundreds of times from the clients I've worked with as a media trainer and strategist.
No matter who they are, I tell them over and over again: Get every Rotary Club speech, every church engagement, every small-town radio interview that you can. Come back after you've gotten several hundred interviews under your belt. You're not ready for Oprah. Because you shouldn't try to handle "The Big One" on your first shot out of the gate.
I wish I could have told Sarah Palin that. Maybe then she wouldn't be so annoyed with Katie Couric. Sarah just wasn't ready.
Here are four more of the many things I tell my clients:
You're a guest. Don't disrespect your host. YOU are responsible for how you come across. When you blame the host for your bad showing, you're acting like a drunk who blames the host of the party for making you look like a fool.
(Sarah-Don't tell people you're "annoyed" with Katie after the interview. Review your "performance" and figure out what you did wrong and how to do it better next time.)
The host knows what the audience wants to hear about better than you do. I'm a talk show host in addition to being a media strategist, and we live and die by the ratings. We have to know what our audiences want or we're out of a job.
(Sarah-You said you wanted to "pivot and go to another subject that you believe the Americans want to hear about." No... you wanted to pivot and talk about what YOU wanted to talk about. It's not your show. You are a guest. When someone asks you a question, you answer it. You can pivot from there. Same advice for the debate, by the way)
Don't try to be someone you're not. The audience can tell when you're not authentic and they will tune you out. Or worse, they can turn against you.
(Sarah- your media trainers did you a disservice by telling you to be more "folksy" and "by-golly-ish." Every time you winked, I cringed. This is a race for the second-highest position in the land. Winks aren't appropriate.)
You're not a guest on the show to promote your book, your product, your agenda. This is probably the biggest mistake that guests make. Let me break it down for you: A host has a show. It stays on the air because people listen. The more people who listen, the higher the ratings and the more advertisers who want to advertise. Therefore a host better know how keep those listeners happy. And you giving a book report or a spiel about your product, is not what makes listeners happy.
As a talk show host, I'm bringing you on as a guest because you are an expert, or an entertainer, or someone who the public is interested in. The show is about what I want to talk about. What I know the public wants to hear about. I need to keep those listeners happy. So if you don't want to talk about what I want to talk about... GO BUY AN AD. That's the venue where you can say whatever you want to say. Not my show.
There are so many other things that I would have told Sarah Palin. And although I have no doubt she is a fast learner, some things you can only learn by doing. You gotta get out there and do the interviews.
One final point I want to make because there's been so much hullabaloo about it. There is no such thing as "Gotcha" journalism.
If you know your subject matter, no one can ask you a question that will trip you up. It's our job as journalists to see if you do know your subject matter. We are the investigators of the people. We are supposed to ask the questions that they would, if they could. The public counts on us to see through false faces and get to the facts. And a good interviewer (and make no mistake, Katie Couric is a very good interviewer), knows by instinct when to keep pushing in a certain area. We know when there's something else there. So don't blame us if you said something you wish you hadn't have said, or you came across looking goofy or headlight-shocked. We're just asking questions. You're supplying the "gotcha" moment.