Part 3.2

Here you are, happily running your club, and one day the telephone rings and it’s a reporter from the local paper who says she’s doing a story about obscure sports and would like to talk to you. Or it’s a producer for a local news show looking for families to profile for a feature story on amateur club sports. Or maybe it’s a producer for a radio or television talk show looking for participants for an upcoming show.

You’ve got some decisions to make. First, will you decide to participate at all? There could well be good reasons to decline: You may be incorrigibly shy, or one of those people who can’t think of what to say until later that night when you’re falling asleep, or perhaps you’re a legend in your club for the amount of time you spend with your foot in your mouth. For our purposes, though, we’ll assume you decide to help with the story.

Once you decide to participate, you need to know about the focus of the story: Is it about fencing in general, or does it focus on a more narrow topic, e.g., “Nerd Athletes” or “Unusual Sports For All Ages”? If the story or show is to have a particular slant, you can tailor your preparation accordingly.

Doing Your Homework

Ideally, you should have at least a few days to get ready for the interview. However, if we’re talking about a TV interview, it’s not uncommon to be given only a few hours’ notice, if that. Prepare yourself beforehand by creating some reference materials for yourself.

Presumably you know all about your own club or the tournament you want to promote, but do you have all the basic details in your head: How many members do you have? When was the club started? What kind of people take lessons there? Or if it’s a tournament: How many entries do you expect? Where will they come from? What time are the different events? Is there a fee for spectators?

If the story is to be about your fencers, can you provide basic information about them? For any one of them, can you answer the following questions: How long has she been fencing? What school does she attend or what is her profession? What appeals to her about fencing? What area of town does she live in? Consider working up a biographical form including this kind of information, along with contact information for any of your members who are willing to do interviews—that way, you can keep it all on file or in a binder and be able to provide suitable interview subjects when needed.

Once you’ve got yourself prepared, you can start thinking about how to handle this particular interview:

Decide what message you want to convey. This may sound contrived, but whether you intend it or not, you will be perceived by those who know little about fencing as representing the entire sport. (Fencers, on the other hand, will see very clearly that you’re nothing at all like “most” fencers, and will recognize you as the individual you are.) You will have a limited amount of time to make whatever points you want to make, so try to keep your message simple and clear. If you are a saber fencer, for instance, talk about the speed and target area and don’t try to convey all the details of right-of-way.

Think about the questions you are likely to be asked and what your answers should be. This is not as difficult as it may sound—journalists almost always ask the same few questions, and after a couple of interviews you will be able to start predicting the order in which they will ask those questions. Expect to be asked what fencing feels like, why you or others do it, what kind of conditioning it takes, whether it hurts, how many fencers there are in your town/city/state, etc., etc. If you’ve never been interviewed before, it is worth the trouble to role-play an interview with a couple of friends. If you think about the probable questions ahead of time and practice a bit, it’s less likely you’ll be caught off-guard during the actual interview.

Try to keep your answers to no more than a sentence or two. Don’t give complicated explanations of tournament formats or lengthy histories of every fencing club in your area. Keep your answers focused and to the point. Remember to try to work in the name of your club or event, along with a phone number or web address.

Moderate your expectations. Once you’ve figured out your message, don’t expect that you’ll be able to convey it perfectly, or that the reporter will produce exactly the story you wanted or expected. It hardly ever happens. Reporters and producers and editors come to each story with their own biases and expectations and those rarely jibe with your own. The only way you will ever see a story exactly the way you think it should be is if you buy advertising space and fill it with precisely the story you want.

If the final story gives a glimmer of what fencing is about, gives sources for readers or viewers to find more information, and leaves you not feeling a complete idiot, count it a success. Anything more is a gift.

General Tips for Interviews

•Practice answering questions, and learn your facts, figures, ideas, and anecdotes well enough so that they become part of your thinking process. Go beyond memorizing—get comfortable enough to be able to discuss your material naturally without sounding rote and mechanical.

•Don’t hesitate to think a few seconds before answering a question. Better to organize your thoughts and sound relatively coherent the first time through than to try to rephrase after you’ve already started talking.

•Forget you’ve ever heard the phrase “off the record.” Assume that anything you say may be quoted by the reporter. Even if the notebook is put away, or the tape recorder or camera is turned off, consider anything you say fair game.

•Avoid flippant or sarcastic remarks. Such comments are usually short and eminently quotable, and almost always end up in the story, usually to your regret.

Example: Reporter asks main reason for fencing, to which fencer drily replies, “I like to hit people on the head.” Appears as straight fact in published article as “Steve Sabre fences because he likes to hurt people.”

• Relax! Even if you consider the interview a disaster and your own part an embarrassment, most readers will forget it as soon as the next issue is published. (Of course, your fencing friends may not let you forget it quite so soon, but you can volunteer them for the next interview.)

Fencing on TV

Fencing is irresistible—there’s no other way to account for the consistency with which television reporters and producers approach stories about fencing: Get the talent geared up! Matt Lauer fenced with Keeth Smart on The Today Show, WNBC Chuck Scarborough took a fencing lesson from Tim Morehouse, and your local TV sports reporter will probably want to fence at your club.

But there’s more--the odds are also pretty good that once the reporter learns a little footwork and a few basic attacks and parries, she’ll want to try a short bout. Inevitably, she and the producer will go cute and draft one of your youngest members to fence and—naturally—defeat her. If the camera operator is a bit creative, he’ll borrow a mask to shoot through, to give a view of “what it really looks like.”

Pretty harmless, if not terribly original. There’s no reason not to go along with it all, and you’ll probably get a few calls in response to such a story. But there’s also no reason you can’t offer your own ideas for them to consider, such as showing a real bout with some experienced fencers, a group class, or an individual lesson. Just adding a tiny bit of real fencing to the fun and games will help give a better idea of what our sport is about.

Tips for Broadcast Interviews

•Practice your message. Michael Levine, in his book Guerrilla PR, says to boil your message down to a “SOCO”: a Single Overriding Communications Objective. According to Levine, “Your message should be concise to the point of haiku when conveying it on television.”

•Expect to be able to answer most questions in 10- to 20-second phrases. Some program formats will allow longer responses, but be prepared for the interviewer to interrupt if your answers run long.

•Be prepared to speak both on and off camera. In addition to the typical on-camera interview format, it’s also common for TV crews to record just the sound of an interview. They’ll edit it down to something that can be used as voiceover narration to their video footage.

•SLOW DOWN! Almost everyone speaks too quickly when starting out. Watch and listen to on-air personalities whose style you admire, and try to emulate their pace. Speaking too rapidly can make you sound nervous and agitated; only rarely will you err too far to the opposite extreme. Take a deep breath, consciously relax, and slow down—you’ll feel calmer, and you’ll sound more confident and more intelligent.

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