Media Relations Masterclass
About this course
An advanced, self-paced course for experienced government communicators on the judgment calls that decide whether reporters, and the public, believe you when it matters.
You already know how to write a media release and prepare a spokesperson. The hard part of media relations is everything around that: the release written at 11 p.m. from what a sergeant told you, before anyone has watched the video; the reporter who asks to talk on background; the first forty minutes of an incident when half of what you've been told is wrong; the partner organization that releases something explosive without telling anyone; and the investigative reporter who sends fourteen precise questions and a Friday deadline.
This course works through those moments using real, documented cases, including the Minneapolis and Memphis police releases that video later contradicted, the Uvalde news conferences, the Boston Marathon response, the Ferguson robbery footage and the reversed reassurances after the University of Idaho killings. Each lesson draws out what a communicator can do differently, and each ends with a practical exercise you can run with your own team.
It covers building relationships with a thinly staffed local press before you need them; writing releases that still stand when all the facts are out; distribution, deadlines and embargoes; the real limits of off-the-record and background agreements; breaking news, holding statements and corrections; coordinating with partner organizations under the Joint Information System model; and handling adversarial interviews, ambushes and hard news conferences.
Who This Course Is For:
- Experienced government and public safety communicators who handle breaking news and contentious stories
- Communications managers who brief leadership and elected officials before they face reporters
- Communicators who work alongside partner organizations in joint responses
- Anyone preparing for an investigative inquiry or a difficult interview
Read a sample from this course
The call you get when they trust you
It's twenty past four on a Thursday and your phone lights up with a reporter's name. Not an email to the general inbox, not a records request, not a tweet tagging your organization. A direct call. She has a tip that a contractor on your biggest capital project has been cited for safety violations in another state, and she's calling you first, before she writes a word, because the last three times she brought you something you gave her a straight answer by her deadline.
That call is the whole point of media relations. It buys you something no amount of messaging can: time, and the chance to be part of the story before it hardens. The communicators who get that call earned it long before the tip existed. The ones who don't get it find out about the story when their director forwards them the link.
Most government communicators treat journalist interactions as transactions. A story comes up, they respond. An interview request arrives, they prepare. The relationship ends when the story publishes. There's nothing wrong with any single one of those exchanges, but a string of transactions never adds up to trust, and trust is what you'll be drawing on when something goes badly wrong.
Strategic media relations works differently. It's built on the reporter's accumulated experience of you: that you're reliable, that you're accurate, that you'll tell them when you can't help rather than going quiet, and that you won't mislead them to get through a bad afternoon. That kind of standing doesn't happen by accident. It's built deliberately, maintained when nothing is happening, and protected carefully when it's tested.
This masterclass assumes you already know the mechanics: how to write a release, how to prepare a spokesperson, how to run a news conference. It's about the harder layer underneath, which is judgment. When to go on background and when to refuse. What to say in the first forty minutes of a breaking incident when half of what you've been told is wrong. How to keep five organizations from contradicting each other on live television. How to sit across from a well-prepared investigative reporter and come out with your credibility intact. All of it rests on the relationship you build first.
What you'll learn
Course Curriculum
Full access upon enrollment- 1.The call you get when they trust you
- 2.The newsroom you're building relationships with has changed
- 3.Introduce yourself before there's a story
- 4.What you do between stories
- 5.When the relationship is tested
- 6.Try this: a relationship audit
- 7.Relationships are how you get the benefit of the doubt
- 8.Sources & further reading
Course Resources
Available after enrollment
Course details
- Self-paced
- Certificate of completion
- Lifetime access
- 7 lessons · 56 sections
- 3 downloadable resources