"It's Not Your Job To Win An Interview": Alex Wellstead On How to Talk to Media
The long-time communications staffer and former Press Secretary for PM Trudeau shares his best tips for how to manage the staffer-journalist relationship
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The relationship between political staffers and media can be a tough one to navigate. Few staffers in recent history have more experience building bridges across this divide than Alex Wellstead, a long-time communications staffer under the Trudeau government who served as Press Secretary for the Prime Minister and Director of Communications at Innovation, Science and Economic Development (ISED), among other roles.
The challenge of media relations can be a scary one when you haven’t done it before, as there’s not much margin for error when you are speaking on behalf of your political bosses. That’s one of the reasons why it’s so important for staffers to share their best practices in how to navigate these relationships.
As someone who spent more time in politics talking to spreadsheets than journalists, I learned a lot talking with Alex about his experiences. Our conversation is below:
AK: Let’s talk media relations! I didn’t have to do much of this when I was in politics, but I remember being terrified the first time a journalist reached out to me and said they wanted to talk about something. What was your process for deciding how to deal with incoming media requests?
AW: Yeah, I mean, first thing is you pause. You pause on it, you take some time to read through it and you assess. What do they want? Why are they coming now? Who else knows about this? Is this a proactive story that they're working on that seems like this very obscure topic they're asking questions on. Or is it just something that your minister or your MP or somebody said throughout the day that you just have to have a reactionary response or quick correction of what they meant by what they said?
But that's it. You take the time to really understand the foundation so you know where you assume they're going with this and have as much information as you can. And then it's the internal triage, you want to make sure to loop in your policy colleagues. You want to make sure to talk to your regional desk, other comms leads in the office, and make sure that, “hey, we've got this… deadline is this time… I need to find out how to answer this.”
And of course, you usually want to pick from the department because a good chunk of the time a lot of the answers can be found from there because it's a very policy-laden question and you don't necessarily want to start making policy by comms.
But yeah, you want to loop in as many people as you can to make sure that you're comfortable with where you think you're gonna take the answer. Align on that message before responding. Don't have guesswork in this. Make sure that everybody's good. Make sure it's not just you lone-gunning it and just moving forward with it because frankly, if you're wrong, you're going to be on the hook with it, even if it feels right. So make sure that you've got your senior folks who are comfortable with the approach. And I get it, that can be process heavy, but it's much better when you're talking about big pieces that are going from a public communications perspective.
And look, if it's ever dicey, if it's ever an issue, figure out what your red lines are. Figure out exactly how far you can go on something before you pick up the phone because you don't want to start making policy up on the fly. You don't want to start making up new ideas while you're talking to a journalist.
And remember: it's their job to really push on you to get something. But frankly, it doesn't mean that your answer necessarily has to change to suit what the question has become. If you're confident as to what your answer is, then stick to your guns on it. Stick to what you know because journalists will expect that. They'll accept that. And they'll respect that because it's your job to be the messenger here, not to try to create new things just because questions get hard.
AK: I think everyone has seen news stories where at the end it says “no comment” from a Minister. What’s the decision you make about saying “no comment” versus trying to have input into the narrative that’s forming around a story?
AW: It depends on a lot of different dynamics within those situations. Sometimes, if you know that the requests are coming in and it really is not a balanced request or just kind of seem to be very ulterior in their motives, sometimes not dignifying it with a response is the right approach. But I am sure I gave responses to some folks that didn't deserve the time or day or aren't actual journalists that I probably didn't have to spend the time or energy on.
You want to make sure that the responses you give are when journalists are coming to you in a true and honest and fair fashion as equals, not as a gotcha kind of thing. So if it seems to be a setup for something, it's not worth the time to put something or just bluntly even in some cases it's a no comment at this time because dynamics shift, issues change, things are happening in the moment. The moment that journalists hear something or get a lead or somebody says something in question period, things can change between when the question is asked and a day later, and sitting on a “no comment” is sometimes better than trying to give a longer answer when your own answer is going to change in 24, 36, 48 hours.
AK: I imagine it’s a difficult balancing act to try and create a positive working relationship with media while also being careful to avoid accidentally creating stories by saying the wrong thing. What’s your advice to someone starting in a media relations role on how to manage this dynamic?
