What’s a Press Conference?

Politicians, celebrities, athletes, businessmen/women etc. hold press conferences to get the news and information out to a group of journalists. One-stop shop.

Mayors hold lots of press conferences

People like former NY governor Eliot Spitzer do damage control via the press conference.

When covering a press conference,

VERY IMPORTANT: Don’t write a chronological re-telling of what happened. Choose what’s MOST interesting!

Compare this transcript of President Obama’s speech to the UN to the Washington Post news story that came out of it (next slide)

http://www.politico.com/story/2013/09/obama-un-speech-transcript-2013-97261.html

Obama Focuses on Middle East in UN Speech

[Washington Post] President Barack Obama addressed the United Nations General Assembly in New York on Tuesday, stressing the need for diplomacy and U.S. engagement in the world. The speech focused primarily on Syria and Iran's nuclear program.

“The crisis in the Middle goes to the heart of broader challenges that the international community now must confront,” said Obama. “How do we address the choice of standing callously by while children are subjected to nerve gas, or embroiling ourselves in someone else’s civil war?”

What to Bring

YourselfNote pad and pen/pencil.Recording deviceCamera for photographs

What does a quote provide?

• Adds color• Makes story lively!• Lets the subject speak for himself or herself.• Supports the main point of the paragraph

without repeating it. • Less writing for you!

Three Picky Things to Remember About Quotes:

1. Put punctuation inside the quote marks. “I love you,” she told her boyfriend. NOT “I love you”, she told her boyfriend.

2. Use the last name after the first mention. Marvelyn Brown visited City College. “I love the school,” said Brown.

3. Best to break up quotes: “Journalism is so interesting,” said Nancy Valdez. “That’s why I chose it for my major.”

Hillary Clinton has decided to leave her office as the country’s Secretary of State.

“Now that I am jobless, I am not sure what I plan to do,” said Clinton, from her home in New York. “But I am not ruling out a run for the presidency in 2016.”