[FIXED] Episode 1090: Profile conspiracies

Welcome to The Strategist episode 1090. I'm your host, Annalise Klingbeil, and with you, as always, Stephen Carter and Zain Velji. Good evening, guys. That's

That's right. I didn't hear Corey Hogan as part of that list. Fuck that guy. No.

He's gone. He's away. He's not here. We

-beens. We don't need people who've last done this work a decade ago. I feel great about this. yeah

yeah carter did almost everything perfectly without him we're doing great just the three of us well

well except on that part okay when i say this work i mean the political strategy work i mean not the work of posting the podcast because that is uh it's

it's gonna happen yeah

yeah carter you learned from your mistakes last time you know what i'm gonna do

put it on patreon this time and i'm not gonna put it on twitter because i'm off twitter i boycotted in twitter so i'm not not going to go back on it he

wants it on twitter don't do he has to post it on twitter that's my new rule if

if people want this episode they'll find this episode right i mean

most recent text to me carter was a tweet so i don't know if i was sincerely your quick twitter but okay because

because i had to find an article that you wanted geez

geez man like you said you're like where'd that come from so i went and found the article so

okay well if we want to go here how did you find the article in the first place i

i don't even know you

you were on twitter okay yeah

you go you don't even know No,

thought, you know, what would be interesting? And then, bam, it just appeared. I

I sought it out. I Googled it. And I found a

a Twitter link. Yeah,

Yeah, you're your own Bill C-18 Carter. I like this. This is good.

I don't like you guys anymore.

Carter House Mountain Bike and Going. Any crashes today?

No crashes this week, to be honest. We are doing exceptionally well on the crash front.

And we went for two rides today. so things are really going on you know looking good for us lots of outdoors stuff almost as nice as your outdoor stuff yeah

yeah i had a beautiful weekend lake o'hara camping couple nights out of cell service it was awesome we recorded thursday night i left cell service came back in uh today thanks for coming back to the podcast that

that was very kind yeah

yeah that's that's exactly why i came back only reason zane how was your weekend inside what

what was this like scripted white people theater that i had to just observe jesus christ it was like the weirdest thing about

adventures no it just it was it seems like part of some fucking simulation i had to just observe there jesus christ radio play it was fine it was fine it was what normal people do normal working class people we stay at home with our kids oh

oh are you gonna bring up working class people that's great that's

working class people the common man speaking

speaking of the common common man we're gonna move into our first segment which is about political profiles uh this is this is a good two people three people to have this discussion with so the global male's kelly kreiderman uh she had a 2000 word profile about the premier's right hand man rob anderson recently i know we were uh tossing it about people were thinking on it talking about it it went into anderson and smith's history from wild rose and floor crossing days um interviewed

interviewed anderson in himself, got into his childhood, you know, the usual profile stuff. So I've been on one side of these as a journalist. Carter, you've been on another side of these as the subject of the profile. We can get into it, an award-winning profile

profile that I am referencing in particular. Zane, I'm sure you've been on kind of another side of it. None of

of the sides of it, yes. No one's writing a profile about me and no one wants me to write anything about them maybe

maybe people you're working with profiles are being written about them so i i want to i want to pick your guys's brains about this kind of the the topic of profiles both profiles of politicians but also also profiles of staffers um in this case rob anderson as staffer so carter why don't we start um why don't we start with you i my first question was going to be like okay you're you're behind the scenes you get that media request um and then what but carter i know in one case you didn't even get the media request before you agreed to do the interview uh do we want to start there do you

you want to start there i don't even know which one that is i mean i i just do oh is this thing you've

you've had several profiles written about you that's an interesting way of saying that to the audience thank you yeah

well so the sprawl i'm talking about the sprawl piece but what are you talking about well

well i mean i knew that they were going to try and do

do a wonder kid you had some of those wonder kid profiles written like years ago oh

oh that's really upsetting setting um yes i did have i've had wonder kid uh profiles i've had the i've

i've had a bunch of different types of wonder

okay but so the sprawl one there was no there was no media request to you you just heard that people around you were being asked to comment on you for a profile is that correct that's

that's right so there's two types there's multiple types of profiles and i get and And one type of, and I've been involved in two of them specifically. One is the, let's take this fucker down type of profile. And the other is, let's build this fucker up profile.

you know, the building

building people up profile, I've had my fair share of. The tearing people down profile, I've had my fair share of. But do you mean with you personally or with people you're working with? Oh, no, with me personally. Both. This is, yeah, this is, you know, but I mean, I've seen it. it over and over again, right? The build people up profile. I mean, we could talk about the McLean spread in the 2015 election that Justin Trudeau had. You know, it was all pictures. I mean, it was barely even a profile, but it built him up. My piece in The Walrus that Max Fawcett wrote, you

you know, that was a build me up profile, right? It was the, you know, the genius strategist who did this and and you know and then the other side of course is the the wall you know the the sprawl tries to tear me down or uh jeremy appels the orchard uh which i believe has had seven or eight people read the article um so it's one of his highest read pieces uh but those types of teardowns also happen and the

the truth of the matter is that neither one of those profiles is true right

right the truth is something different and so i'm when i found out that the sprawl was trying to do their piece i thought i best grabbed the bull by the horns and and uh control the narrative right try and control how things were written and what was written and you know arguably i was successful um some people might think that other people might think that uh they got a really big scoop because i talked so long well

well people can go read uh read that profile on the sprawl for themselves but zane let's bring you in here in terms of strategy of

of if you're working with a politician who who you know a journalist sends in that media request hey working on this feature working on this profile we want to talk what what is that strategy in terms of like how long they should talk for who else you should give the second second voices that sort of thing walk walk me through some of the some of the strategy. I

I think it's different for a politician or a staffer. I'm deeply conflicted and open to, frankly, open to this conversation to see if it persuades me one way or the other in terms of whether I think staffer profiles for active staffers is a good idea. Like, there's, there's a

a question there for sure. Yeah,

Yeah, like, there's a school of thought on that regard that says, they're a distraction, they don't help. There's another school of thought that says they humanize, they have an ability to effectively make a political staffer a known quantity. And once they're a known quantity, they actually make them a trading chip, which is not necessarily bad for an office. So I think there's a school of thought there we can discuss. As it relates to the politician, it depends who's the politician, what's the outlet, what's the relationship with the reporter. I'd almost turn this back to you, Annalise, with your expertise in media relations, right? But there are some key questions that you you have to ask around what's their objective, what's their story, what's your story, is it worth it if their story gets told over your story, or can you find other outlets for it? And so when you mostly see political profiles these days of politicians, you have a good sense of who the writer is, what their objective is, they're pretty upfront with it. And frankly, one of the rules that you'd probably want to have in place is understand who, understand how long, understand when and then think about um when as in when the publication date is and then when you talk about the actual interview itself my lesson has always been shorter rather than longer right it's key messages over and over this goes back to the heart of media training for for anyone which is is the longer you speak the more uh raw material you give them to mold into a piece that uh allows to to shape it in their own direction of course barring stephen carter's carter jump

jump jump in yeah did you go into that sprawl interview with a key messages and a time limit there carter i

i don't think he did i

had key messages i

did not have a time limit

you know my story you know the the sprawl is a very interesting example because they do long-form journalism how many how many long-form journalists are left uh annalise i mean how long Zero? In

is 2,000 words, which is long for

for Alberta. That's got to be the longest

longest piece written in the Globe and Mail about Alberta, period, right? Like, it just—we don't have a lot of long-form journalists. So, again, to Zane's point, you know, who's the journalist and what are they going to write? And Zane's point about active political staffers is bang on, too. You know, if you have your choice, if you're Rob Anderson, I don't think he's sitting there saying, saying, oh, goody, I get to have a profile written about me. I think he was probably dreading it. But the truth is that

that those profiles get written anyways. So if

they're going to be written, you