Media Training Update – w/c 3rd July

Starting this week with a simple question. Is this news?

It’s Monday 3rd July. (Where did June go?)

Good morning. The week ahead…

Monday: High Court hearing continues in Cabinet Office challenge to Covid-19 inquiry

Wimbledon starts

Tuesday: Rishi Sunak makes his third appearance before the Liaison Committee 

Wednesday: Westminster Abbey service marking 75th anniversary of the NHS 

Thursday: Rare Rembrandt portraits auctioned at Christie’s 

World Artificial Intelligence Conference opens in Shanghai 

Friday: UK Athletics Championships 

A nugget about headline writing from a Times interview with Poldark star Aidan Turner… 

“What’s different now, what is perhaps a post-2015 thing, is people saying things that are baldly untrue: barefaced, to your face, they will tell you stuff that isn’t true. And they will say it in a very convinced way.”

Krishnan Guru-Murthy on 25 years at Channel 4 News

READ MORE 

On the Inside Edge website – Tony’s A-Z of media training: 

J is for Jokes:

Some of our delegates are worried they won’t be sparky enough and look to comedy as a way of brightening up their delivery. It is a dangerous path. Some jokes will simply fall flat. At other times it might make you appear flippant on a subject which some people might be taking very seriously. Then there’s the hazard of pre–records where subsequent editing might remove the necessary context to the one liner. Leave the funnies to stand up pros – you will be sparky enough if you’ve worked on compelling content.

READ MORE

And speaking of jokes…

Penny Mordaunt, the leader of the House of Commons recently questioned what the Yes Minister characters Jim Hacker and Sir Humphrey would have made of the current glut of political podcasts. It’s worth quoting in full, because it’s actually genuinely funny for a politician…

“Bloomberg UK Politics is listened to by people that own the country. Politicial Thinking is listened to by people who run the country. The Rest is Politics is produced by people who failed at running the country, Women With Balls is listened to people who should be running the country. And Chopper’s podcast is listened to by people who think the country should have a royal yacht.

Newscast is watched by people who love the BBC, Coffee House by people who hate the BBC, and The News Agents by people who used to work for it…

We are blessed with a plethora of media outlets, but it does get confusing.”

And for context, here’s the glorious original…

Be part of the MMB. Thoughts on this week’s content, or interviews you’ve seen, heard, or (best of all) done. We’re @insideedgemedia or just reply to this email. 

Footnotes:

Jim Morrison, the lead singer of American rock group The Doors died of heart failure in Paris, aged 27 on this day in 1971.

Highs of 15 degrees in Grasmere today and 19 in Portsmouth.

And this week’s dog-pic-footnote…

Back on Monday. Have a lovely week.



Team Inside Edge