Archive for October, 2009

Los Angeles Dodgers Manager Joe Torre talks to reporters for nearly an hour before every game according to a recent profile by the Wall Street Journal’s Hannah Karp. This contrasts with the typical baseball managers’ pre-game press conference of five to town minutes. Many big-league sports coaches and executives buy into the conventional wisdom that shorter is better and that the goal of media interviews is to be “concise” in order to minimize mistakes, blunders and controversies. But Torre shows the fallacy of this reasoning. Torre, who has a $13 million-3-year contract, realizes that communicating with the public via the media is not a frivolous or minor part of his job. Instead, it’s a major part of building a brand loyalty with Los Angeles baseball fans and with baseball fans worldwide.

By being consistently interesting and always available, Torre builds rock-solid relationships with all the journalists who cover him. Does this mean that he always gets 100% flattering coverage? No, but it means that, over time, the positive coverage completely drowns out the occasional negative. And it means that he is rarely the subject of cheap shots by reporters who might be angry at him if he were difficult the deal with.

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