MEPRA Academy: Media Skill and Crisis Communication

International journalist and media trainer Nick Walshe is offering a workshop covering preparing, performing and delivering key messages on camera and before reporters, especially in a crisis situation. His courses explain what journalists need, how local regional and international reporters have different priorities and how spokespeople can perform effectively and honestly before a media audience.

Workshop#MEPRAAcademy

AED0 for MEPRA Members
AED1,500 for Non-members
AED0 for Media & Communications Student

Register now

Workshop details

International journalist and media trainer Nick Walshe is offering a workshop covering preparing, performing and delivering key messages on camera and before reporters, especially in a crisis situation. His courses explain what journalists need, how local regional and international reporters have different priorities and how spokespeople can perform effectively and honestly before a media audience.

Nick specialises in explaining how the world’s top news organisations function, how they view this region and his session contains video examples of good, bad and spectacularly awful practice.

In this course he goes beyond traditional media training to look at how organisations can communicate during a corporate crisis – crime, tragedy, fraud, injury or death – and advises how to best manage a situation that will happen to many organisations at some point in their existence.

Course participants will also have the chance to be grilled on a news topic close to their heart, and watch back their interview. This is how trainees really learn!

Course schedule

09:00AM – 09:45AM: Getting Ready for Media and Communicating Effectively

09:45AM -10:30AM: Interview 1, followed by feedback

10:30AM -10:45AM: Break

10:45AM -11:15AM: Challenging Questions and Managing a Crisis

11:15AM -13:00PM: Interview 2, followed by feedback

It’s possible that not everyone will have the chance to go on camera. But If you want the opportunity, come briefed for a 3-4 min TV interview on a news topic, and have a few notes ready for Nick so he can formulate some questions. Like most journalists, he’s pretty quick at this stuff.

Level of Training

Beginners-Intermediate

Facilitator

Nick Walshe, Gulf-based Communications Consultant and Media Trainer with experience at senior levels of international journalism in Europe and the Middle East , founder of Dubai’s media971 FZ CO

Nick Walshe is the founder of Dubai’s media971 FZ CO and specialises in executive media training and presentation skills, company crisis communications and corporate video production.

Following a high-level career with some of the world’s top news broadcasters, Nick now coaches          business leaders, government ministers and officials, senior executives and corporate spokespeople.

For 13 years he has worked in the Gulf, offering media and crisis communications training, along with advice on messaging, advocacy and presentation skills, to many of MENA’s biggest companies and institutions.

Nick’s work focuses on preparing spokespeople for media attention, identifying critical corporate messages, delivering them with maximum impact, and rehearsing strong supporting evidence to make an argument as forceful as possible.

Major media training projects include courses over three years for the management team and spokespeople at Expo 2020 Dubai, focusing on high-risk reputational areas; a three-year crisis communications programme for Qatar Airways; and he is currently a preferred supplier to Emirates Group as a media trainer.

Nick has previously worked with UAE Government departments including the UAE Central Bank and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, as well as Ministers and senior officials from other countries. He was previously attached to the Public Diplomacy team of the Dubai Ruler’s Office.

Corporate clients include JP Morgan, Jumeirah Hotels, AMEX, Intership Shipping of Cyprus, McLaren, Huawei, DP World, Audi, Marriott Hotels, Petrofac, General Motors and many more.

Nick also works in TV and digital production – scripting and producing films for clients such as ADNOC, Mars, Honeywell, the British Council and ADNOC Drilling.

He also continues to work as a TV journalism consultant, advising and training on editorial projects in Saudi Arabia, Bangladesh, Oman, Pakistan, Lebanon, the UAE, Iraq and India.

Nick’s career began in newspapers in the UK. After working for BBC Radio and TV, he spent 15 years with the UK’s ITV News and ITN, as a reporter, presenter, producer and assignments editor.

He joined the management team that launched Al Jazeera English in 2006, running the channel’s reporting division and editing the channel’s global content. He moved to Dubai in 2010 to found media971.

The session will take place on

Thursday 16th March in person at the Murdoch University Dubai.

Location map

Accreditation

MEPRA has partnered with UK’s Chartered Institute of Public Relations (CIPR) to establish a continuous professional development (CPD) program. MEPRA members will receive access to CIPR’s CPD platform, which includes more than 1,200 learning resources and enables practitioners to map their training journey and earn their way to becoming MEPRA and CIPR Accredited Public Relations Practitioners. This course is worth 5 CPD points. For more information on CPD and accreditation click here.

Registration

You can register by completing the form below or by sending us an email at community@mepra.org.

Please note that there are no cancellations & refund upon confirmation.

Register now

Bookings are closed for this event.