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Interview Strategy: Agenda and Game Plan

Setting Your Agenda

You have to articulate what do you want to accomplish from the interview. Of course, being interviewed by a journalist might be an interesting and flattering experience, however, if this is the only reason you are doing the interview, you might be doing more harm than good. If you cannot explain exactly why you are doing the interview and what you hope to accomplish, you will not be able prepare properly.

Obviously, you want to present a positive view of ash, but this is not enough. The real question is: What do you hope to accomplish by presenting this positive view? In answering this question we have to think on one hand, what do we want for ash and for ashers, and on the other hand, we have to remain realistic.

For example, the goal of getting suicide legalized is probably unrealistic. However, we can set the following goals:

  1. Discourage readers to act against ash (for example, by trolling, or trying to close down ash forums and web sites).
  2. Make potential ashers be aware of our existance and how ash may be good for them, and thus possibly may find ash and benefit from it.

There are probably other possibilities. I prefer the last agenda. I do not think that readers can do much against ash, so I do not think it is important to set "discouraging action against ash" as a goal. However, potential ashers may benefit from finding us, and media coverage is a good way to advertise our existence. Even if the url of ash sites and the name of ash-related newsgroups are not given, potential ashers with knowledge that such forums exist will set out looking for them. So, I think this latter goal is both beneficial and realstic.

You can choose whatever agenda you want, or create a new one, as long as you have an agenda, and a plan to help you achieve it.

The Game Plan

Based on our research and agenda, we try to summarize a "game plan", focusing only on a small number of the better key messages and replies. For each agenda we need three to four messages to focus on. No more. The following are some possible agenda (listed according to increased pessimism) and some possible relevant KeyMessages:

  • Agenda: discouraging action against ash (optimistic game plan).
    • Message: Openness, rational thought and more happiness/ less pain.
    • Message: Ash frees other groups from people who would otherwise bring everybody else down.
  • Agenda: discouraging action against ash (pessimistic game plan).
    • Message: Freedom of expression
    • Message: Communication on the internet cannot be blocked
  • Agenda: Reach potential ashers
    • Message: Focus on the benefits of readers. Having somebody to talk to.
    • Message: Friendships. There were marriges on ash.

The difference between the pessimistic and optimistic game plans addressing the agenda of discouraging action against ash, is that in the former we are pessimistic about our ability to convince people that ash is positive, and thus we focus on messages which explain why acting against ash is either useless or causes more harm than good. In the optimistic game plan we hope that by explaining that ash is positive, people will have no motivation to act against ash to begin with.

The final agenda is the most pemissitic since we are giving up on addressing non-ashers in any way. Instead we focus on addressing potential ashers.


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