‘I think the media are manipulative, they lie and they’re just promoting a political agenda.’ This was what one delegate said to me at the beginning of a recent media training session. We always ask our trainees to share with us what they think of the media at the start of the day, as it’s
How to become a media-friendly expert
Rolling news channels, documentaries, magazines and trade titles are looking for experts every single day. Whether they need comment on Brexit or rising obesity rates or insight into the latest fashion trend for men, everywhere you look in the media there are commentators voicing their opinion. Whether your specialist subject is sport, business, health and
Merry Christmas and a Discount Code!
Here at Nine, we hope you are all enjoying the party season and winding down work for the holidays! As a thank you to our clients this year, we are offering a 10% discount on our 2018 courses. Just add XMAS10 at the check-out if booking on our Ultimate PR Training Day or our Ultimate Broadcast Briefing
Four Super-Useful Ways For Freelancers To Stay Focused
Working as a freelancer is great in so many ways – the freedom from presenteeism, the variety of projects you can take on and the fact that technology now enables us to work from (almost) anywhere. But there’s one issue that freelancers struggle with time and time again – how to focus. When you’re working
When Is A Good Time to Put Out News?
We all know the phrase ‘a good day to bury bad news’. This is used when the government or a big company chooses to put out a press release on a day when the world’s media is looking elsewhere. This might be on the day of a Royal Wedding or when a mega star dies
The 4 Things To Do Before Pitching To A Journalist
Pitching is one of the tasks PRs get most stressed out about. We know this, because from the hundreds of PRs and comms specialists we’ve trained over the years, this is the number one issue they bring up. How to best approach a journo, how to get their interest, whether to call or email them,
Five Things You Won’t Be Told Before a TV Interview
As journalists and media training experts here at Nine Media, we are often asked to go on news programmes to comment on a topic we have written about. The first time I did this I couldn’t believe how little hand-holding there was considering it was national television. I was shovelled into make-up and before I
Goodbye, Cagney and Lacey. Hello, London tourists!
Before Karen and I launched Nine Media back in 2013, we spent months planning our new, exciting venture. And one of the most fun things to plan was our website. We spent hours writing and re-writing the copy, finding a template for our site, and fixing on a brand logo (thanks to Michael Thomson, our fab
Four Things Journalists Hate about Bad Press Releases
Take a guess at how many press releases land in a journalist’s inbox every day? As a freelance journalist I can expect around twenty. When Nine Media co-founder Karen Attwood worked at the Independent on Sunday she received more than a hundred. Bad press releases are the scourge of busy news desks (and sometimes the