Effective Media Interactions Training Workshop
Supplemental Materials
Speaking to the Media
- Check out the ASA Meeting Press Conference
- Click here to download the workshop notes for best practices
- Develop a 1-minute-pitch
- Review this checklist before talking to media:
- Loop in your organization’s press officer or media team
- Vet the journalist and read some of their work
- Acknowledge their request promptly
- Find out their deadline, outlet, and audience
- Confirm the interview format
- Determine your key talking points
- Choose your language based on the audience
- Practice describing your work in plain language
- Prepare examples and helpful analogies
- Share your passion for the research
- Prepare multimedia: high-resolution images, sound files, video clips
- Follow up after the interview
Writing for the Media
- Download the writing handout as a fillable word document or PDF
- Click here to view the ASA Lay Language Paper Checklist.
- Use the Nature summary paragraph to write your summary: https://www.nature.com/documents/nature-summary-paragraph.pdf
- Use the De-Jargonizer at http://scienceandpublic.com or Up-goer-five text editor: https://splasho.com/upgoer5/ to remove jargon.
- L. K. Jones, Reaching Reporters, Teachers, and Bosses — Lay Language Papers
Using Social Media
- Check out the ASA publications’ social media guide for posting templates
- Use social media management tools like Hootsuite or Later to schedule or cross post content.
- When making a post, be sure it
- is short and to the point (or the first sentence is a good hook).
- avoids jargon where possible.
- includes an image or figure that can be understood with little context.
- tags the relevant users on the platform.
- includes relevant hashtags.