Do You Need to Be a Journalist to Become a Media Trainer?
It’s one of the questions I hear surprisingly often from communications professionals who are thinking about becoming media trainers: do I need to have been a journalist first?
My answer is no.
But I can completely understand why people ask.
Journalists have an obvious head start when it comes to understanding how interviews work. They know what makes a story interesting, how questions are constructed, why a journalist might keep pushing on a particular point and what happens to an interview once it leaves the room and becomes a piece of journalism.
That experience can be incredibly useful.
But being able to conduct a good interview and being able to train somebody to handle one well are two different skills.
A media trainer has a different job
When I’m running interview practice, part of my brain is absolutely thinking like a journalist. I’m listening carefully to the answer, spotting the follow-up question, noticing what hasn’t been answered and deciding whether there’s somewhere interesting to push.
At the same time, another part of my brain needs to remain firmly in trainer mode.
I’m watching what the participant is doing with their messages, whether they’re actually answering the question, how naturally they’re communicating and what’s happening with their verbal and non-verbal delivery.
I’m also making decisions about the person sitting in front of me. How much pressure will be useful? Should I interrupt them or let them finish? Is the problem I’m hearing something I need to address immediately, or would stopping them now simply knock their confidence without helping them learn?
Then, when the interview finishes, I need to turn everything I’ve noticed into feedback they can actually use.
That requires a rather different skill set from getting a good story.
You don’t have to recreate the newsroom
One of the things I’ve seen over the years is media training that places enormous emphasis on recreating a difficult journalist encounter.
I understand why. It feels realistic, and there are certainly times when a spokesperson needs to experience pressure before facing it for real.
But a difficult interview followed by a list of everything somebody did wrong isn’t enough.
The interview is an exercise within the training. Its purpose is to give the participant somewhere to apply what they’ve learned, find out what happens under pressure and then have another opportunity to improve.
That means the trainer needs to know what they’re looking for before the interview even begins.
If somebody waffles, for example, simply telling them to be more concise may be accurate, but it doesn’t necessarily give them the tools to do anything differently next time. The training that happens before and after the interview is what gives the practice its value.
That’s where knowing how to train becomes every bit as important as knowing how to interview.
Communications professionals bring something valuable too
There’s another reason I don’t believe journalism should be a prerequisite for becoming a media trainer.
People who have spent years working in PR and communications bring a different perspective to the room.
They understand organisations from the inside. They’ve worked with messaging, stakeholders, reputation, corporate priorities and senior leaders, and they know that the person sitting in front of them often has a much bigger communication job than preparing for one journalist interview.
That matters even more now.
The people we traditionally call spokespeople may also be appearing on podcasts, speaking on panels, presenting to customers, joining webinars, recording video or communicating directly through social media.
I call them Brand Champions because I think that better reflects what we’re really preparing them to do: represent their organisation effectively wherever they communicate.
Someone with a strong communications background can bring enormous value to that work.
So what does make a good media trainer?
I think it starts with credibility and experience, but neither has to come from a newsroom.
You need to understand how the media works and what journalists need. You need a strong grasp of audiences, messaging and storytelling, and enough communication experience to recognise why something is working or why it isn’t.
But then you need another layer of expertise.
You need to understand how people learn, how to structure a workshop so that each element earns its place, how to adapt when the people in front of you need something different from what you planned, and how to create exercises that give people the opportunity to practise rather than simply listen.
You need to observe closely and give feedback that is honest enough to make a difference without turning the experience into an exercise in finding fault.
And you need to be comfortable working with very different people. The enthusiastic participant who wants to try everything may be sitting next to somebody who has been told by their boss that they have to attend and would much rather be somewhere else.
The same trainer has to find a way to help both.
Experience gives you the raw material. Training gives it structure.
If you’re an experienced journalist, you may already have instincts and knowledge that could make you an excellent media trainer.
If you’ve spent your career in PR or communications, the same is true.
What matters is what you do with that experience.
For me, becoming a good media trainer means learning to look beyond what you know and concentrating on what the person in front of you needs to learn, practise and be able to do differently by the time they leave.
That’s the shift from subject expertise to training expertise, and it’s an important one.
Because clients aren’t paying you simply to know a lot about media and communications. They’re trusting you to help their people become better at representing them.
Thinking about becoming a media trainer?
The Media Trainer Method® is designed for experienced journalists and communications professionals who want to turn the expertise they already have into a structured, professional media training offer, or strengthen and extend training they already deliver.
We explore the practical skills behind effective training, including workshop design, messaging, exercises, interview practice, questioning, active listening and constructive feedback, alongside the five frameworks I use in my own training.
We also look at how the role is evolving, including preparing Brand Champions for the range of platforms on which they now communicate and using AI intelligently for research, preparation, messaging and practice.
And because you need to be able to sell the service as well as deliver it, we work on positioning, pricing, potential clients and how you take your offer to market.