Media madness...

A last minute tag-in by a colleague yesterday saw me overseeing my first media (television) interview.

Aside from a little nervousness, on my part, the whole process was fairly painless.

The interviewer was professional, our pres was straight to the point, on message, and since we’ve been dealing with the issues in question for a couple weeks now, didn’t need the slightest bit of coaching from me on what to say.

So my nervousness was completely unnecessary.

There were a couple of things I could have done better, offered to take her coat sooner and remembered to have a business card with me, but that’s nit picky stuff. Actually I’m still getting used to having business cards in the first place. I have yet to hand one out in a professional capacity.

(Although, when my cards first came in I did mail a whole bunch out to my friends and family)

What really interested me about the interview was the co-dependent nature of the whole thing. The news organization needs us to help fill a time slot and provide expert advice about what’s happening in our industry and we’re taking advantage of the publicity and the air time to help get our story and our message out to people who wouldn’t normally be exposed to it.

Now in this instance it was fairly harmless, each of us is doing the other a favour. As such my role is minimal. But I’m intensely curious about what I would have been expected to do if I’d been overseeing an interview where the reporter was hostile or where we were the subject of the news story instead of just providing expert advice on it.

Where do my job responsibilities\authority to begin and end and what exactly do they consist of? I’ve asked to shadow the next couple media requests we have because I’d like to soak up the job requirements in case I get asked to do it again.

New Jobby

I'm stuck at the office on a Saturday morning with more time than work on my hands so I thought I'd write a bit about how I got to this point.

Three months ago I landed a new job.

Same company. Little more money. Different field of work.

What makes it truly a lucky break is that the job I'm doing now is in the same field I've gone back to school for. This means I get to learn all the practical applications at the same time as I simultaneously study the theory. Talk about luck.

Now, instead of pushing paper from one side of my desk to the other, I'm a one man communications department and it feels like I have my fingers in everything going on around here. That sounded kinda dirty. Ahh, what the hell, it's Saturday. Let it slide.

I was a little wary at first about making the change. While my old job wasn't the greatest it did have a lot of advantages and I'd carved out a little niche of my own that worked pretty well for me. But in truth I was stagnating, spinning my wheels uselessly, without any real occupational challenges. I know that my old manager recognized this and she tried to make my job more interesting, but you can only dress a turnip up so much. At the end of the day it's still fairly bland and tasteless.

New jobby? Much more time intensive. Evenings. Weekends. Every day I'm operating way out of my traditional comfort zone. I've been ripped from my soothing little hidey hole and flung out into the naked sunlight. And I like it. (I'm utterly shocked by how much I like it, but I'm trying to maintain a poker face)

I've got at least two and a half more years at this position, provided the universe doesn't take a pot shot or two, and then I'll have the option of either stretching my wings or staying on for a bit and seeing what I can create. I look forward to having all those options. I like options.