I’m writing this from two vantage points. The first is 25 years as a professional media trainer, teaching leaders how to prepare for, perform in, and survive high stakes interviews.
The second is as a podcast agency founder, where my team and I work with clients and their guests on how to show up in long form interviews, podcasts, profiles, and magazine features, without losing control of the story.
The Vanity Fair profile of Susie Wiles, built from a series of long form interviews, offers a clear teaching case. This is not about politics, ideology, or intent. It is about media mechanics.
Below are the eight mistakes that stood out, each mapped directly to the media training lessons I teach.
1. Treating Long Form Media Like a Relationship Interview
Media triage and interview format awareness
One of the first lessons I teach is how to triage a media request. That means understanding who the journalist is, the media outlet, the interview format, and how the material will be shaped and edited.
Today, almost no interview begins with a blank slate. Journalists and outlets come into interviews with a preconceived sense of what the story is likely to be. That’s not a flaw. It’s the reality of modern media engagement. Understanding that reality is part of the job.
Long form print media like Vanity Fair is not a relationship building environment. It is a narrative building environment. Treating a series of interviews as informal, trust based conversations creates unnecessary exposure. Each conversation adds material to a story you do not control.
Ms Wiles did not offer one carefully framed description of the President and then return to structure. She offered multiple informal descriptions across interviews. That is classic relationship behavior. You assume shared understanding is building, when in reality the journalist is accumulating material.
2. Weak Audience Analysis
Audience analysis and segmentation
Another part of her weak game plan was weak audience analysis.
She consistently spoke as if her primary audience were political insiders, while the actual audience was a broad Vanity Fair readership and, downstream, a general public audience.
That mismatch shows up in how she explained things, not just what she said.
She referenced personalities, dynamics, and behaviors in a way that assumes shared context. That works when you are talking to colleagues or operatives. It does not work when the audience lacks that shared frame. Outsiders do not hear nuance. They hear judgment.
She spoke as though she knew exactly who she was talking to… but it wasn’t clear who that audience actually was.
Without clear audience intent, messages drift. Language meant for insiders lands poorly with outsiders, and explanations that feel neutral to the speaker can sound distancing or judgmental to the audience receiving them.
3. No Message Map
Message mapping and narrative discipline
A message map is a tiered structure designed to keep interviews on track. It identifies the issue, the audience or audiences, the core narrative, three key messages that reinforce that narrative, and supporting facts that ladder up to each message. It’s a pyramid with the bottom pieces supporting the top.
The goal is simple. Every answer drives home the same story.
In a mapped interview, you can usually finish this sentence after reading a few answers:
“This interview is fundamentally about…”
In this case, it is hard to do that. Was the issue leadership style? Internal discipline? Personality? Governance? Loyalty? All of them appear, but none dominate.
Without a defined issue and narrative, individual observations floated independently. When answers are not anchored to a map, journalists, not spokespeople, decide what the story is actually about.
4. Soundbites Without Control
How soundbites are built
Soundbites are not accidents.
They follow a formula. They are brief. They have an emotional stance. They rely on a specific keyword or pivot word. And they often use a contrast structure, not this, but that.
One of the best examples comes from Ronald Reagan during the 1984 presidential debate. Asked if he had any doubts about being too old to run for President again, Reagan said “Not at all…” and that he too would not make age an issue of the campaign and would not exploit his opponent Walter Mondale’s youth and inexperience (Mondale was 56 at the time).
It was short. It carried humor and warmth. It flipped the frame. And it ended the conversation. That is a soundbite built with intention.
In contrast, memorable language offered without structure becomes raw material for someone else’s narrative.
5. Ignoring Pause Answer Stop
Response discipline
Pause Answer Stop is exactly what it sounds like. You pause to think (about one second), you answer the question, then stop talking.
The stop is especially important on sensitive questions. If you are in what I call the “happy zone,” you should transition deliberately back to your familiar territory. Pause, answer, then pivot or bridge to your proactive zone, the place where your key messages live.
Without that discipline, long form answers turn into exploration rather than communication.
6. Blurring Values Attitudes and Opinions
The communications hierarchy
Values are stable and enduring. Attitudes are directional. Opinions are situational and disposable. That’s the hierarchy. All this stuff we see on social media that sometimes ticks us off… those are just opinions… they’re flimsy and not deeply rooted.
In these interviews Wiles gave, personal opinions were sometimes delivered in ways that felt value based. That elevates them unnecessarily and makes them heavier, more quotable, and harder to contextualize. Strong communicators know exactly where each statement sits in the hierarchy and speak accordingly.
7. Confusing Candor With Wandering
Authenticity requires structure
Candor is not the problem. Candor is essential.
But candor without structure turns into wandering. Wandering leads people to say things they do not fully mean, in ways they did not intend.
This always gets me into debates with people who think “authentic” means no practice or structure. Structure doesn’t kill authenticity. It protects it.
“Alcoholic Personality?”
Really? That’s not candor… that’s wandering. That doesn’t ladder up anywhere.
Long form interviews reward honest answers that are deliberately framed, not open ended reflections that drift.
8. Structural Role Confusion
Role clarity and trust
The awkwardness many people sensed was not about tone or warmth. It was structural.
She appeared caught between roles, insider, interpreter, and narrator. When a spokesperson shifts between those roles without clarity, audiences feel the tension immediately. In long form media, ambiguity does not disappear. It becomes subtext.
The Takeaways
Long form interviews are not places to perform without a plan.
You do want to be candid. You do want to be authentic. You do want to be yourself. And for goodness sake answer or respond to the questions asked, but developing a structure and a game plan is essential to success.
Even the best jazz musicians and the best improv comedians work from structure. They know where they want to go. They may ad lib along the way, the notes and jokes might be pure ad lib, but they always know how to return to the framework.
The same rule applies whether you are sitting down with a magazine journalist or stepping into a long form podcast interview. Structure, planning, and strategy are what allow authenticity to land instead of drift.