A New Reporter I'd Love to Work With

Damon Weaver has interviewed politicians and celebrities alike, yet is only 11 years old. Dubbed the "Future of Journalism", Weaver has become a viral superstar for the interviews he conducted for his elementary school's station, KEC-TV. His fame has already landed him a college scholarship and appearances on CNN, FOX and MSNBC.

Recently, he sat down with President Obama. When asked by Time Magazine about his expereince with the President, he remarked:

He was a very nice, tall guy. And he gives very good details. I liked interviewing him. He's just like a normal person.

You can check out the interview in its entirety here.

Gamesmanship: Obama and the Mainstream Media

There was a strange echo of disdain in both the NY Times and Tribune accounts of the President's news conference Tuesday. For straight news stories -- neither was labeled as a news analysis -- they both strayed into something akin to a theater review.

Both articles led not with what Obama said during the news conference, but how he said it.

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Reporters for both papers characterized the President's demeanor as pedantic, with the churlish NY Times going so far as to liken Obama to a professor boring his class into a trance.

Rarely do White House correspondents seem so preoccupied with a President's mood. And rarely do they report on Presidential news conferences as if they were dramatic monologues delivered in an acting class.

But rarely, if ever, has a President dealt with the mainstream media at a news conference as Obama did Tuesday, when he conscpicuously catered to specialized outlets and took fewer questions from their "establishment" counterparts. And I can't help but wonder if there is a connection here -- if somehow the harsh tenor of the Times and Tribune stories reflected a wounded mainstream media intent on returning a slight.

After all, media relations is to some extent a power dynamic. The media has the power to determine the news the public consumes. Sources have the power to determine which media outlets have access to the news. Both parties can use their power to groom relationships or to express a grievance.

For instance, if you're releasing news and you give one media outlet an opportunity to cover the story in advance, don't be surprised if a chief competitor ignores the story altogether. Still, that strategy may be worth it, if the outlet you favored rewards you in return by granting the story better placement.

Likewise, if a reporter lacks interest in your material or exhibits a bias against it, don't hesitate to consider how you can use access to either cultivate a better relationship with her, or minimize her opportunity to do you harm.

(Photo via Doug's Travel Blog)

Filter-Free News: Lessons from Obama's Communications

Sure, you can still catch President Barack Obama on traditional mainstream media outlets like 60 Minutes, but he is effectively reaching out to niche media as well. Who didn’t see ESPN’s coverage of the president’s picks for the NCAA basketball tournament.

Politico.com had this article about Obama's outreach plans, and it's something we can ALL learn from.

Obama himself plans to meet soon with liberal bloggers, according to an administration official. With little fanfare, he’s already sat for interviews with Black Enterprise magazine, Telemundo and Los Angeles-based Hispanic radio host Eddie “Piolin” Sotelo…

…Obama can exploit the fact that the traditional newspapers and networks are weakened by competition from cable and the Web, and by a faltering business model. What’s more, the proliferation of outlets has been embraced in recent years by a newly energized liberal base — eager to match the decades-old success of conservatives in building media channels to circumvent what they see as a biased or trivia-minded Washington press corps.

So in an age where traditional newspapers and networks are weakened, where it’s tougher to land that story in the Trib or Sun-Times, take a lesson from the President and include bloggers and other niche media in your next outreach plan.

(image from ESPN.com)

Presidential Press Conference

This was a precarious stance for Obama to take in the currently venomous climate toward Wall St.

As usual, the President talked to us like adults and asked us to behave accordingly. And he's right. But from a public relations perspective, he risked sounding sympathetic to a class of investors that have become public pariahs. And his comments came one day after he proposed a bank bailout that some people have characterized as a hand-out to the rich.

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Certainly the administration knows that any effort to temper public enmity towards Wall St. could make the President sound too conciliatory in an atmosphere where the electorate wants revenge. But this only underscores the depths of Obama's predicament: If he fuels that populist anger, he raises political barriers to the additional money Congress will need to authorize to aid the ailing economy.

So Obama has opted for a message of peacemaking. And he probably figures that Republicans can hardly quarrel with Obama's remarks, since they, too, need to make nice with their Wall St. base.

The prediction here is that Obama will pay a short-term price for his "don't demonize" remark, after the media finishes dissecting every word of the speech. The media began rumblings last week that Obama might be out of touch with the intensity of the public's spite, and unfortunately, his comment Tuesday night could be misconstrued as more evidence of that myth.

What is perhaps most admirable here, is that Obama is his message mavens are hardly oblivious to the criticism such remarks might provoke. But that hasn't deterred the President from saying what's necessary in a world of adults.

Bonus Coverage

Today's top story represents one of the rare instances where the fledgling Obama Administration has struggled in the face of an emerging storyline.

Obama's message machine hummed like a Corvette (prior to GM's collapse) through the campaign and into the first six weeks of his Presidency. But when the public blew a gasket over AIG's plans to award misfits with bonuses, the administration appeared to be backtracking. As a result, today's storylines characterize the administration as out of sync with the public, rather than in control of the situation.

What could have been done differently?

Set Expectations

From his acceptance speech on Election Night through virtually every publicly utterance since, Obama has tried to prepare the public for a prolongue economic slump. Strangely, that kind of perception-shaping was neglected in the case of AIG.

This predicament underscores the importance of setting expectations and releasing bad news on your own terms. We're learning today that the Administration knew about the bonuses for months. It would have spared itself some damage if it had disclosed months ago that 1) the bonuses were planned; 2) it would be legally difficult to derail them; but 3) the administration would do everything it possibly could to outmanuver the lawyers and stop the gluttony at AIG.

Had that transpired, recent stories might be focused on and administration fighting to keep greedy bankers in check, rather than an administration giving greedy bankers a government check.

Practice Message Discipline

Perhaps because it didn't anticipate the intensity of the public wrath against AIG, Obama Administration members exhibited a rare display of mixed messages over the past 48 hours, alternately expressing resignation to the bonuses and determination to undo them. From the NY Times:

Still, the president’s directive to his Treasury secretary to “pursue every legal avenue” against the payments seemed to conflict with statements over the weekend from the Treasury Department and from Lawrence H. Summers, Mr. Obama’s chief economic adviser in the White House, that the Treasury already had reviewed its legal options and concluded the administration had no power to stop the payments .

“We are a country of law,” Mr. Summers said on ABC-TV’s Sunday show. “This Week”:There are contracts. The government cannot just abrogate contracts. Every legal step possible to limit those bonuses is being taken by Secretary Geithner and by the Federal Reserve system,”

Unfortunately, by getting behind the story, today's coverage has focused less on the substance of the President's proclamation than the political expediency that informed it. That threatens the authencity of the message.

With today's statements, Obama may be well on his way to regaining control of the message. But for a day, at least, it appears that the Administration paid a price for bankers run amuck.