Workshops

Overview

Our workshops go beyond skills development. They provide

• An understanding of what newspaper, magazine, radio, television and Internet journalists want.
• An insight into how mainstream and on-line media work.
• Hands-on experience and competency in:
  
  
  • Assessing, preparing and writing media releases.
  • Being interviewed by radio, print and television journalists.
  • Advanced skills in remote and satellite television interviews.
  • Using scenario-based exercises to build confidence in dealing with the media.
  • Issues management skills.
  • Preparing public affairs strategies.
  • Winning media opportunities through pro-active planning.

We do not subscribe to the theory that the best way of media training is to terrify the participant in the process. The atmosphere of this and all other workshops is collegiate and confidential. It is designed to instill confidence as well as make the workshop an enjoyable one.

Public Advocacy and Strategic Communications

This workshop is designed to help you, as a team leader, to develop a public advocacy strategy for an issue you are now working on or will face in the future.

It deals with a real world, real time policy area selected by you.

You will come away from this workshop with an outline program that "road maps" your team's future communications. You can immediately begin to implement this strategy supported by the resources available in your organisation.

Media relations and public advocacy are not the same. A public advocacy strategy that starts and ends with media will be suspect. While the media remains an essential avenue for reaching Australians, it is only one strategy for effective public advocacy. It needs to be balanced with other communications tools and tactics to effectively spread the organiisation's messages.

Speechwriting and Presentation skills

The program will equip you with the skills to make persuasive presentations whether speaking to a handful of people in a committee meeting, addressing a consultative group or appearing before hundreds at a national convention. It builds on skills already acquired through previous training and from other communications experiences.

How often have you sat and endured the following:

• A presentation on a disk that will not load up.
• A presentation with over 30 complicated slides
  • Each one with a font that is very small and hard to read...
  • And which the presenter insists on reading out loud...
  • While confessing that they are somebody else's presentation.

Executives, facing important public speaking engagements in the next few months, will find the program particularly relevant.

Writing with clarity

This workshop focusses on the efficacy of the written word as its objective, rather than the spoken word. It points to the use of jargon as comfort-zones and uses tools such as Stylewriter, to wean participants away from the thought that: 'complicated is good'.

Media Awareness and Skills Development

Media Gurus is a pioneer in media training in Australia. We have the only courses of their kind accredited by the National Training Information Service with workshops ranging from half-day individual sessions to two-day programs for up to 50 people.

The Parliamentary Committee Program

Increasingly, Senate committee hearings are becoming more prevalent as a way of testing Departmental policies, as well as a method of developing Public policy.

Hearings, whether in Senate Estimates or at Select Committees, can be daunting for those who are either preparing submissions and briefs for their senior officers, or for witnesses themselves who do not understand the politics behind the process.

The workshops Media Gurus have devised take you behind the scenes into the Committee process and reveal the secrets of what makes for a successful appearance and what can be career-threatening.

Media Gurus' Success

Media Gurus' success over many years and our value to clients lies in:

• Tailoring every course to every client.
• Extensive, easy to follow student notes.
• Friendly, continual feedback and databased evaluation.
• The professionalism of our team each of whom has had a successful and varied media career.
• Using up-to-the-minute and interactive multimedia presentations.
• Pioneering scenario-based training for issues and media management.
• Unparalleled experience in the Australian and international environments.
• A thorough knowledge of community, metropolitan, national, regional and international traditional and modern media.