http://www.behindthespin.com/features/why-is-this-lying-bastard-lying-to-me Behind the Spin is an online magazine for public relations students and young practitioners. Mon, 06 Feb 2012 09:25:24 +0000 hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 http://www.behindthespin.com/features/why-is-this-lying-bastard-lying-to-me/comment-page-1#comment-2133 Community surgery: how to tackle the problems that could kill your blog - Talk About Local Tue, 12 Jul 2011 13:48:11 +0000 http://bts.simonwakeman.com/features/why-is-this-lying-bastard-lying-to-me#comment-2133 [...] The ‘I scare people’ problem The symptoms: you’re Clarke Kent trying to hit the story, they’re just trying to make pizza. Try these treatments: - hold back those journalism chops. Describe, don’t interrogate. Your old instincts will soon come in handy when an election comes up. What makes many hyperlocal blogs so wonderful is that mix of hard and soft news. Not flower show pictures shoved in to make the advertising department happy (joy! you don’t have one!), but because your readers care – this is the glue that knits your community together. Reading about unknown activities on your blog might entice someone who feels scared to go outside into the community centre and become a volunteer themselves. So you’re making connections and bringing something previously hidden, because the mainstream media can’t turn it into a pithy two minute news package, into the open. - take your time. Again, you’re not under a time limit. The first few minutes of what people say to interviewers are what they think they should say, it’s only after a while that you start to get the real conversation. If you don’t want very, very long video interviews, here are some good tips from Nick Booth. - find the questions that work for your subjects. Funnily enough, the time-honoured questions that journalists love aren’t always the ones that real people like to answer. Much as those interminable questions in questionnaires don’t really get your real views, they just get your reflex reaction as you click on through to reach the prize. Have a look round at other techniques like the Oxford Muse or NLP, or others. Equally, if you’re not from a journalism background you can learn a lot from journalists, just maybe not, in this case, Jeremy Paxman. [...] [...] The ‘I scare people’ problem The symptoms: you’re Clarke Kent trying to hit the story, they’re just trying to make pizza. Try these treatments: – hold back those journalism chops. Describe, don’t interrogate. Your old instincts will soon come in handy when an election comes up. What makes many hyperlocal blogs so wonderful is that mix of hard and soft news. Not flower show pictures shoved in to make the advertising department happy (joy! you don’t have one!), but because your readers care – this is the glue that knits your community together. Reading about unknown activities on your blog might entice someone who feels scared to go outside into the community centre and become a volunteer themselves. So you’re making connections and bringing something previously hidden, because the mainstream media can’t turn it into a pithy two minute news package, into the open. – take your time. Again, you’re not under a time limit. The first few minutes of what people say to interviewers are what they think they should say, it’s only after a while that you start to get the real conversation. If you don’t want very, very long video interviews, here are some good tips from Nick Booth. – find the questions that work for your subjects. Funnily enough, the time-honoured questions that journalists love aren’t always the ones that real people like to answer. Much as those interminable questions in questionnaires don’t really get your real views, they just get your reflex reaction as you click on through to reach the prize. Have a look round at other techniques like the Oxford Muse or NLP, or others. Equally, if you’re not from a journalism background you can learn a lot from journalists, just maybe not, in this case, Jeremy Paxman. [...]

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