Morning all, it’s Monday 18th November.

For the final few episodes of Year Of The Expert we’re ironing out lingering doubts about media engagement.

This week…The Big Freeze. What happens if I go blank during an interview?

“If this was a series called Year Of The Politician this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Scandal-Hit-Celebrity this would be difficult to answer. If it was a series called Year Of The Dodgy Chief Executive then this would be difficult to answer.

But it isn’t…and what this comes down to is audience expectation and how the audience expects the interviewer to behave.”

LISTEN HERE

The week ahead:

Monday: Brazil hosts G20 summit

Tuesday: Farmers’ protests in London

Volodymyr Zelenskyy address to European Parliament to mark 1,000 days of war

Wednesday: CPI inflation data

Thursday: Matt Hancock gives evidence to Covid-19 inquiry

Friday: 50 years ago: Birmingham pub bombings

Final day of COP29

Sunday: Ruben Amorim takes charge of first Manchester United match

Presidential election in Romania, Presidential election run-off in Uruguay

“Negativity drives online news consumption”

A journal paper in Nature finds, “negative words in news headlines increased consumption rates (and positive words decreased consumption rates)”

It’s quite a technical read (to put it mildly) but a fascinating bit of research.

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“If a government is to succeed it must be able to manage the media while also telling a simple story to the country about why it is taking decisions – connecting what it is saying with what it is doing.”

Lee Cain

The former Downing Street Director of Communications argues the PM needs a total overhaul of his No.10 media operation.

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“The more I get retweeted on @X the more followers I lose; and my whole feed just prioritises @elonmusk over everything else. It’s not a town square for everyone, it’s just a platform for him alone”

Ben De Pear 

Former Editor, Channel 4 News 

We’ll do more on this in the coming weeks, but for now an interesting piece from Sky News on the apparent X-Bluesky migration 

“We are beginning to see this sort of fragmentation, this diaspora of what used to be a singular platform, into communities split into multiple places.”

READ MORE

Footnotes:

On this day: The film world celebrated the wedding of the year as Michael Douglas married Catherine Zeta Jones on this day in 2000.

Weather: 8 degrees in London, 4 degrees in Leeds.

Mutts: Leo, photographed yesterday…

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. 

Have a brilliant week.

All at Inside Edge