Hello, Is anybody home?
Alison Crawford Alison Crawford

Hello, Is anybody home?

Many organizations maintain websites with almost no effective contact information. What I mean by that is a phone number attached to a human who will answer it, or a personal email address where someone is accountable for reading messages. Instead, institutions supply catch-all email addresses such as, mediarelations@organization.ca or webmaster@organization.com. They often come with a cute little paragraph that informs people, “this in-box is checked several times a day”. In my experience, this phrase is interpreted as “never” or “a few times a week”.

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Questions in advance? Unlikely.
Alison Crawford Alison Crawford

Questions in advance? Unlikely.

When someone get a journalist’s questions in advance, they can’t help but dive in and write long, comprehensive answers that look good on paper but don’t sound great when spoken aloud. They memorize fact sheets and statistics. Communications officers may be asked to prepare a binder of background information! Over-preparation can extinguish the ability to sound natural.

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