How media works, how to get stories noticed?

After a very long trip to Munich (9 and half hours by train from Budapest) I attended a very interesting and useful course, the Media Traning on Monday morning. I have to say, I had some expectations before. I wanted to hear about how to be more effective in science writing, how to get our stories noticed.

The course with Wendy Barnaby and Martin Ince was incredible. Not only I learnt a lot but I found it really amusing as well.
The best part was the ad-hoc Press conference, when Wendy pretended to be a very pompous interviewee and we were the press, having no previous knowledge on her background, recent work, etc. We had 10 minutes to find out the story for the evening edition. She (as an imaginary interviewee) had no key message to deliver, she was totally unorganized and we were a bit unprofessional in asking the right questions. Still it was a really valuable experience, and the vivid discussions afterwards taught us the lesson.

Martin showed us a brief introduction on how media works, what we must avoid when dealing with it. I found it also very useful.

Sadly, I could not follow the afternoon session, as NIL (NGI International Liaison) duties called, so I missed the "How to be a good interviewee" part.