Media Training: A Coach’s Playbook for the Media Game

If you don’t know what media training is, you are not alone. However, in the next five years, every team in major and mid-major collegiate and professional sports will include media training as part of their preparation for the season – or wishing they had. High school coaches who want to prepare their student-athletes will also embrace this cutting-edge trend as a life skill they need to pass on to their players to be successful in sports and in the real world. So, what is media training? It is not training for reporters or a Journalism 101 course as the name implies. Instead, media training prepares you for interviews with reporters by learning: how to protect and project a positive image; how to be on offense, using poise and strategy to get across your message; how to play defense, answering the questions you want to answer, the way you want to; how reporters operate and what