Improving Broadcast News Conferences (1990)

Improving broadcast news conferences Take it from a working journalist: Reporters follow the laws of physics. That is, they usually go to the place of least resistance. If you make your news conference difficult to cover, it's not going to get on the air. Public relations professionals, of course, don't set out to make things difficult for reporters...sometimes it just seems that way to us. During my career as a TV news reporter, I've attended several news conferences where it was hard to do my job. Some of my points may seem obvious to you, but they're based on situations I've been in. These suggestions may help you increase broadcast coverage of your next news event. * Schedule your event carefully. I went to a very lonely news conference on the day of the presidential elections in 1988. I don't even remember what the news conference was about...just that it had nothing to do with the elections. Try not to plan your news conference on what is going to be a heavy news day, like a general election or when a verdict is to be issued in a major criminal trial. Holidays are hard to judge. People don't usually schedule news conferences, so it's more likely that your event will get air time. Most newsrooms, however, are working with skeleton staffs, so there may not be anyone available to the event. Another word on timing: mornings are best. Unless your subject matter is very important, I can almost guarantee you a weak turnout if you schedule it for four o'clock in the afternoon. It brings broadcast journalists, especially TV reporters, dangerously close to deadline. Unlike print reporters, we can't just go to the news conference, back to the newsroom, do a few phone interviews and file. We have to go to several locations to shoot cover and interviews, fighting both traffic and the clock. Then, we have to write, track, order chyron with lettering, graphics and effects, and then edit it all together. The process usually takes at least a few hours. * Plan for reporters' equipment. If your subject is important and the news conference is close to air time, assignment editors will probably call you about live capability. If they send a truck, they'll want to know if there's any place for the truck to park outside the building, so they can put up their mast (or dish) and transmit. They'll also want to know how far the room is from where they'll park, because the reporters will need to run cable from their cameras in the room to the truck. If this is going to be impossible, the editors may want to know if there's a way that you can get the most interesting participant from the news conference to rush outside to the truck to do a live interview. It's also possible that an editor will opt for tape-playback, in which the photographer pops the tape and rushes it out to the truck, where it's fed back to the station or bureau. Some larger stations and bureaus have portable microwave equipment that can be pointed out a window and relayed back to a receive site. This equipment is still cost-prohibitive for most small- and medium-sized stations. Live-for-radio can involve microwave, cell phones or landlines. If there are phone jacks, let the radio editors know beforehand. Radio reporters usually work alone and don't carry enough cable to reach the back of the room. Therefore, consider reserving some front seats for them. You can assist broadcast reporters by arranging for a mult box for their audio equipment. A mult box is an electrical device that combines and regulates the flow of electricity and distributes a consistent audio feed. Broadcast journalists plug their cameras and tape recorders into it to get sound. Some hotels and event planning services can provide mult boxes. Make sure that the mult box is hooked up early. If there's a problem with it, there won't be a mad scramble at the start of the news conference to hook up unilateral mikes. …