When silence isn't golden.

• Author: Mackinnon, Peggy
• Position: Finance executives as company spokespersons - Includes related article on business reporters - Career Management

Your biggest division just reported a major accounting discrepancy, and reporters are already clamoring for comment. Before you face them, read what you should say - and how.

Hi, I'm Peggy Mackinnon from the Denver Post. One of your employees called me to say that 25 percent of your workforce is being laid off. I thought the company was in good financial condition. Can you explain?"

In today's business environment, you never know when you'll be asked to be a spokesperson for your company. This is not a casual exercise. To do it well, you must prepare thoroughly and thoughtfully, and you need to know how to deal with the media. But these very complexities also make your spokesperson role a great career management skill that's well worth your while to cultivate.

Dealing with the media is very different from dealing with the investment community. By and large, the investment community wants you to speculate on issues such as undisclosed expansions, new products, future sales or the CEO's health or retirement plans. Analysts are forward-looking. They want to know how your stock will do in the future.

The media is much more focused on the present. They want to know how a situation will impact the people reading their newspapers and watching their television programs. To serve as a spokesperson, you need to have a working relationship with the media and to understand their perspective.

Most reporters are generalists, not business people. They consider themselves the eyes and ears of the American public. They think they have a right to the information they're after and anyone who gets in their way is simply an obstacle to be overcome. Reporters will get a story, whether they get it from you or from someone else. They want to present a balanced story, but if a company won't talk, it can't complain that its point of view isn't presented.

ON THE RADAR SCREEN

Of course, the other side of the coin is that a positive story about your company can help influence your stock price or position your company for an initial public offering. But these stories don't just happen. You have to get on the radar screen of influential media who cover your industry. Get to know them in quiet times, because you never want to meet a reporter for the first time during a crisis. Be prepared to meet with the media at least once or twice a year. This meeting, which could be held over lunch, is just an informal backgrounding session to keep reporters apprised of your company's status.

If your company has an internal communications department or an external public relations firm, have someone arrange the session for you. Bring the communications person to the meeting if you haven't worked with the media before.

If you don't have a public relations staff, call the reporters directly. "I'm Fred Smith, the CFO for XYZ Corp. I've followed your stories and know you cover our industry. Could we have lunch sometime so I can give you an overview of our company?"

Getting to know local correspondents for national publications can serve you well when you have a news story. The local media also are important to you, even if most of your operations are elsewhere. When a national reporter does a story about your industry, he or she will do a database search of everything that's been written...