SKA site bid announcement - a media highlight

	The announcement that South Africa, with our African partners, will be hosting the lion's share of the iconic SKA came on Africa Day - 25 May 2012. The Friday afternoon press conference in Pretoria was packed and the Africa cake was a media hit. (Photo: Loretta Steyn)
	Who says good news does not sell? Several newspapers carried the SKA site bid outcome as front page news on 26 May 2012. (Photo: Loretta Steyn)
	Dr Bernie Fanaroff, SKA SA Project Director (left) meets with Bun Booyens, Editor of Die Burger a few days after the event. (Photo: Jaco Marais)

Organising the press conference around the SKA site bid announcement felt like a roller-coaster ride at times - exciting and exhilarating but also nerve-wracking, with quite a few unexpected turns and a good dose of adrenalin.

The press conference was scheduled for 15:30 on a Friday afternoon (25 May 2012) in the GCIS (Government Communication and Information Services) building in the middle of Pretoria city centre. According to all the rules about press conferences, this is bad timing and a less than ideal venue (due to hectic traffic and absolutely no public parking in the building!). But, due the anticipation and build-up around this announcement, I knew the press would be there.

By 15:00 the room was already packed with local and international journalists, and eNews was all set for a live broadcast of the event. In Cape Town a large group of journalists joined us via a video link from a media venue in Parliament. Minister Naledi Pandor, who would lead the announcement, was not scheduled to arrive for at least another 30 minutes.

And then the news broke ...

The SKA office in Manchester published a press release online about the outcome of the SKA site bid and within minutes every journalist in the room - most of them connected to the internet via a tablet or smart phone - knew. Some of them started writing and filing stories immediately, while others demanded to know what purpose it would serve to wait for the local press conference. We were also surprised by this turn of events, but did our best to explain and convince them that it would be worthwhile staying for the response from the South African government and project office.

Fortunately it all worked out in the end. Minister Pandor answered the media's questions eloquently and gave them excellent sound bites. So, it definitely paid off for everyone who came and stayed!

Lessons learnt

Reflecting on what went well and what we could have done better, here are a few lessons learnt from this press conference:

1. Work closely with all stakeholders. This press conference was hosted by government (GCIS and DST) and it helped to meet with them before the time and talk through all the logistics.

2. Visit the venue beforehand - at least a week before your event. Check the technical equipment, number of seats and space for television cameras. Find out about parking! Look at the backdrop of the speakers and arrange for additional banners to make it more interesting and relevant to your topic.

3. Include details about parking and security procedures in your invitation. For example, journalists wanting to attend the video-linked media event in Cape Town could not get in without an ID book, since it took place inside the Parliamentary complex. Use Google Maps to create a map and directions to the parking and venue.

4. Arrive early on the day. You have to be there long before any members of the media arrive to make sure everything is ready. When we arrived at the GCIS venue that Friday afternoon I realised that the number of chairs in the venue would not be enough and, despite requesting it in advance, no extra chairs had been delivered.

5. Treat the media like royalty. Remember, every journalist in the room represents hundreds, thousands or even millions of readers, listeners and viewers.

6. Make sure you have water and lots of (good!) coffee available, and some healthy snacks if possible.

7. Have a press pack ready. In this case, we did not know ourselves what the site bid outcome would be, but we could at least prepare files with background information about the SKA project.

8. Try, if at all possible, to get everyone to sign a register of attendance. This is your proof of who attended and is a very useful media list for future use. If journalists show up that did not RSVP, welcome them and ask for their business cards (or at least their contact details).

9. Allow enough time for questions. Most of the really good quotes and most interesting (and most used) sound bites come from the Q&A session on the programme, not from the formal speeches.

10. It helps to have an interesting visual "prop" for the cameras. The media loves something different and unusual. In this case, Kim de Boer of the SKA SA project office suggested ordering a huge cake in the shape of the African continent - showing our African SKA partner countries. The fact that our announcement coincided with Africa Day, and that the Minister was willing to play along and cut the cake, meant that this cake was probably the most photographed and filmed cake in Africa this year! See photos of the event (and the cake!)

11. Make sure you have a photographer to cover the event. You need good photos of such a milestone event - for own use and other media - and it is tricky to get images from press photographers, since their images are mostly linked to a specific client or media platform and not immediately available for general use.

12. Allow time afterwards for one-on-one interviews and photo opportunities. Make sure that you warn the scientists and other key people on the project that they must be available for at least an extra hour afterwards. Many journalists are keen to do one-on-one follow-up interviews on the spot.

13. Get your press release and relevant high-res visuals online immediately after the event, so that you can refer journalists who were not able to attend to these resources. It helps to add good photographs (with captions!) and up-to-date bios of the key people on the project. See event press release

14. Due to the nature of this announcement - the split of the SKA between Africa and Australia - there were lots of technical and political questions from the media and public in the days following the announcement. We worked with Professor Justin Jonas (Associate Director: Science and Engineering on the SKA SA Project) to develop a comprehensive Q&A for the media. We developed a technical version and a popular version. Both proved to be hugely helpful as background information, so that Professor Jonas did not have to keep on answering the same questions over and over again in the following weeks. Several media outlets published the Q&A as it was, see for example this page on LEAD SA web site.

15. Have enough people ready and available for media interviews - for at least 14 - 21 days afterwards. We definitely needed to have more experts who could do media interviews, also in other local and foreign languages.

16. Remember to thank people afterwards, including the media who have given the story good coverage!

17. Expect (and prepare for) critical questions from the media. Good journalists are supposed to probe and look at a story from different angles. You have to be willing and ready to answer questions such as: Who is going to pay for the SKA? How much will come out of the pockets of ordinary South Africans? Who is really going to benefit and how? How many jobs will this project create? Can South Africa really afford to be involved in this project, given other socio-economic priorities? What does the SKA mean to the ordinary person? What about the environmental impact of building thousands of telescope dishes in an ecologically fragile region? And, probably the most asked question of all, will the SKA save the Karoo from fracking?

18. Monitor your media coverage (with the help of a monitoring agency if at all possible), but also collect as many as possible "hard" clippings!

By Marina Joubert, SKA South Africa communication consultant