Accolades for "Success With The Media: " This is a must-have book for people entering the media relations profession, as well as for the veteran public information officer. Sipes' insight serves as a smack-in-the-face reminder of what can go right or wrong. Sage advice and great examples throughout! Len Sipes has brought his many years of wit, wisdom and fabulous stories to inspire a new generation of public relation professionals. Sipes offers great insights, and many of the questions the book answers are exactly the sort of advice I would have asked for to assist me in starting my own public affairs career. The writing is honest, easy to understand, and gripping at some points. It's a good book and I believe that thousands of others will agree. If I were going into a media relations job for the first time, I would drop everything and read Len Sipes's book from cover to cover. Len captures the gritty, ground level media relations insights and tactics needed to survive in today's fast paced world-wide thirst for information environment. Len Sipes's insights on managing the media are practical and insightful as well as analytical. Sipes is an expert media crisis guru. This is a textbook for media relations professionals for sure. Chocked full of principles and illustrated with experience, this resource is a pleasure to read. Yet this definitive guide for media survival is also gold mine for journalists. Why? If you are committed to fair and accurate reporting, this book defines the ethical and principled practices that should be represented in anyone getting the story as well as those giving it. Overview You need to succeed at media relations. This book shows you how. What will this book do for you? Success With The Media breaks new ground. It addresses the needs of new and veteran spokespersons. It provides the stories, tips, and insight to succeed in this vastly misunderstood profession. It discusses an endless array of issues not covered by other books, especially the difficulties of internal politics and obstruction. If you understand the media relations and organizational process, you will prosper. If not, you and your organization could face a very public demise. Do you know that some of your top executives may talk to the media without telling you? Have you ever had an agency head tell you something that wasn't true that ended up on the front page of the morning newspaper? Have you ever been given advice by a technical expert that turned out to be wrong, and you had to retract the statement? These are all real examples of life in the media relations trenches. You need to know that these pitfalls exist, and you need to recognize what you can do to avoid them. You need knowledge of social and digital media; you need it summarized for quick lessons and information as to what works and what doesn't. You need to understand how to market and promote your organization, how to break bad news and how to take care of yourself and those around you. Knowing what to do will earn the respect of your executives. I have never lost an agency head due to negative publicity; their gratitude provided me with both job security and an endless series of promotions and pay increases. You will become an invaluable part of your organization. The book also provides management with the knowledge to properly guide their spokespersons. They will understand what happens and why. It allows them to become a team leader and use the capacities of their public affairs team effectively. Finally, reporters and news executives will have a better understanding of what happens when they call for information or comment. If they know the cumbersome internal processing of media inquiries, they will understand that confusion and delay is often an inevitable part of the process. Imprecise reactions may not carry negative inferences