President Albrecht News Conference Prep

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NewsHounds Memo

Tomorrow (Monday) in class, please come prepared with everything there is to know about USU’s (and Utah’s) budget crisis—tuition, budget cuts, measures the university is taking to make ends meet (including early retirement buy-outs), etc., etc.—so we can prepare for Wednesday’s live press conference with USU President Stan Albrecht.

You can start researching this with this entry on the USU Today website, and then look for everything else you can find elsewhere on USU Today and the other Utah press (Trib, HJ, etc.) about financial issues in higher education. If you find particularly good sources as background, please post them here with URL links on NewsHounds1.

Two weeks ago, the president announced a 4.5 percent Tier II tuition increase. The student body also adopted a $130/year athletics fee increase. Also, today’s (Sunday) HJ reports that 200 faculty/staff are taking the buy-outs. Who are they? What departments? Faculty or staff? How much will that save USU? How will this effect YOUR education @ USU? Is that enough to keep the university afloat? Look for other old news to use as the basis for your questions of the president on Wednesday.

You need to have a clear understanding of both the state’s fiscal shortfall that has precipitated this crisis, as well as the particulars of USU’s budget woes. So do some homework! What do you think your readers (at USU, in Cache Valley, in your hometown...) will want to know from the president about economic shortfalls and the university?

Come to class tomorrow prepared with SPECIFIC questions and lines of questioning that you’d like to hear the president address when we meet with him.

• What do you want to know about the university's fiscal situation that you don't already know from previous press reports?
• What kinds of issues or topics would you (and your readers, whom you represent) want to hear the president of the university discuss?
• What specific aspects of the economic challenge do you think need explaining to your readers?
• What specific subjects have you heard the president (or others in higher ed) discuss that are unclear, fuzzy, confusing, of particular concern?
• If you had USU President Albrecht’s focused attention for five minutes (which you will!), what do you think USU students, parents, local residents, faculty, etc., would want to ask him?
• Remember to think of followup questions. If you ask him X, and he answers Y, what (from your research) would be a probing follow-up question that would get closer to the “truth” you want to discover?

Remember the three basic rules of interviewing:
1. Do your homework.
2. Set parameters of the interview.
3. Repeat No. 1.
(3.a. Be flexible. Think. Bring your brain...)

We’ve already set No. 2: our conversation will focus on the university’s fiscal issues and whatever related areas that you see being affected by the budget shortfall. So you all need as much info and understanding (see Nos. 1&3 above) as you can get so that you can ask informed questions, and recognize when you may not be getting the full, accurate response from the president.

I will expect EVERYONE to ask questions at Wednesday’s press conference, which will last only 30 minutes. So get ready. Remember that, like every interview, the conversation may wander. So you must be prepared not only to follow the wandering, but to bring the subject (President Albrecht) back to the primary focus.

Remember that any interview, and especially a press conference with a public figure like the president, is a bit of a struggle between the interviewer(s) and the interviewee to control the direction and tenor and subject matter of the conversation. If you let him, the president is perfectly capable of talking without a breath for 30 minutes, which means that he will have controlled the conversation, and that the representatives of the press (you) will not have gotten a word in edgewise. We call those kinds of sessions “speeches,” not press conferences or interviews.

Be ready to discuss—substantively!!!—these issues when we meet tomorrow. I am copying this to Tim Vitale, the university’s PR guy, who will attend our session on Wednesday. He may have other suggestions (and is welcome to come to class Monday—10:30 a.m. Tim?)

El Peez