If there’s one lesson that has refused to age over nearly 25 years of media training, it’s this: the first answer is still the sell.
In fact, it matters more now than it did in the early 2000s. Attention spans have tightened, interviews move faster, and journalists are making snap judgements earlier than ever. Yet despite this, people continue to get those crucial opening moments wrong.
The Two Classic Opening Mistakes
For PR professionals preparing clients, the pitfalls tend to fall into two familiar camps.
1. The Brusque Shutdown
Some interviewees just want to get through the process as quickly as possible. The result? Abrupt, minimal answers:
“Yes.”
“No.”
“Mmhmm.”
It’s not hard to see what happens next. The journalist quickly senses resistance and assumes the interview will be defensive. From there, the tone can turn confrontational, and the opportunity to create something constructive slips away almost immediately.
2. The Overloaded Answer
At the opposite extreme is the overly helpful client. They want to collaborate, to add value, to share everything they know. So they try to pack 20 ideas into a single response.
In their mind, it’s thorough and useful. In the journalist’s mind, it’s unfocused and difficult to use.
Remember: journalists are not just listening, they’re editing in real time. If an answer is too long or meandering, it will either be cut down heavily or ignored altogether.
And that introduces another risk. Once you hand over something unwieldy, you hand over control. Journalists will always aim to be accurate, but their expertise is storytelling, not necessarily your client’s specialist field. The more they have to reshape, the further the final quote may drift from the intended message.
What Journalists Actually Want
At heart, journalists are building stories out of usable quotes. That’s the key word: usable.
They are typically looking for concise, self-contained soundbites that slot neatly into their narrative. If they need more detail, they will ask for it.
So instead of trying to say everything at once, your clients should focus on delivering something clean, clear and quotable.
A Simple Formula for Strong Answers
There’s a structure that works consistently well:
- Start with the factual answer
This can be as simple as “yes” or “no”. - Add context
This is where your client demonstrates expertise and subtly positions themselves as the authority on the issue. - Stop
This is the part many people struggle with. Silence is not a problem to fix. If the journalist needs more, they’ll come back.
A tight, well-structured answer gives the journalist exactly what they need: a quote that can be used without heavy editing.
Setting the Tone Early
Journalists make decisions quickly. Within the first answer or two, they will have a sense of whether the interview is going to be productive, insightful or difficult.
That judgement shapes everything that follows.
Land the first answer well, keep it focused, and resist the urge to over-explain. Do that, and you don’t just answer the first question effectively, you set the tone for the entire interview.
And in media work, tone is often everything.
