Speaking & Training

Stephanie Coontz speaking at The Evergreen State College

Speaking Engagements

Stephanie Coontz has spoken on the following topics for audiences across the United States, as well as Western Europe, China, Japan, Australia, and Taiwan:

  • "Four Years After Legalization of Same-Sex Marriage: What's Next?"
  • Marriage: An Unadulterated History
  • Unfamiliar Territory: The Changing Landscape of Love, Sex, Marriage and Parenthood
  • For Better AND Worse: Revolutions in Family Life, Gender Relations, and Work
  • The Way We Never Were: Myth-Remembering, Fake History, and the Nostalgia Trap
  • Glass Ceilings and Sinking Basements: Class, Race, Gender, and Family Life in Contemporary America
  • Fifty Years of Feminism: What Do We Stand? Where Are We headed?

Media Training

Why Answering Falsehoods Often Backfires — And Other Things Researchers Need to Know About Going Public

Researchers have unique access to information that could enhance public discussion, but face special challenges in making their work accessible without over-simplifying. Stephanie Coontz has published more than 100 op eds herself and turned the work of scores of other academics into op eds, briefing papers, and fact sheets that have received national – often international – attention. She has taught media-training workshops, ranging from two hours to two days, at Columbia University, Notre Dame, Penn State, UCLA, Rice, Emery, NIU, and for numerous professional conferences.

Workshop Topics

  • Identifying what parts of your work will most interest a broader audience, and why these are often not the same points that interest fellow specialists or activists
  • Why refuting a falsehood often fixes it in people's minds.
  • Addressing different moral frameworks and understandable grievances or anxieties that can lead decent people to conclusions you disdain.
  • Becoming a news source (and when not to be one), how to get quoted, and how to minimize the chance of being misquoted

Learn how to:

  • Write op-eds, blogs, and letters to the editor that get published: the role of hooks, ledes, nut graphs, and kickers.
  • Handle statistics and figures, find powerful examples or anecdotes, and translate graphs and figures into clear sentences.
  • Establish a coherent story line that people can repeat to a friend even if they can't remember any of the data.
  • Meet the distinct challenges of print interviews vs. radio shows vs. television appearances.
  • Pitch a story to an editor, publisher, or producer and pass the secret audition lurking behind every radio or television pre-interview.
  • Bridge back to your take-away points.
  • Use body language (even on the radio).

If time permits, participants practice responding to journalists' questions or making short statements for the radio or television, receiving feedback from Coontz and other workshop attendees. In this highly personalized setting, we address the challenges of messaging, obtaining a platform, and handling difficult or hostile topics in ways that reflect the improvisational quality of working with media. Coontz will edit a small number of drafts that are sent to her following the training.

Schedule a Talk or Workshop

Please contact:
Jodi Solomon Speakers Bureau
295 Huntington Ave. Suite 211
Boston, MA 02115
(617) 266–3450
inquiries@jodisolomonspeakers.com

What Others Say

Stephanie Coontz taught me more in one day about how the news media works than I ever knew before. Her work on my behalf resulted in national newspaper and television coverage. She is a national resource.
 Michael J. Rosenfeld, Associate Professor, Dept. of Sociology, Stanford University.
I know of no one who can match Stephanie's ability to help scholars find hooks for their work, construct compelling op-ed pieces, handle press interviews, and enter the public discourse.
 Steven Mintz, Professor of History, University of Austin
Stephanie was instrumental in helping us publish an Op-Ed in the New York Times. She guided us in how to bridge the gap between scholarly writing and public messaging, going over repeated drafts of the Op-Ed and offering detailed and insightful feedback. She really helped us sharpen our take-away points and find the "so what?" implications. Working with Stephanie was an amazingly productive and rewarding experience.
 Paul L. Morgan, Associate Professor, Director of the Educational Risk Initiative, Dept. of Education Policy Studies, Pennsylvania State University; George Farkas, Professor and Director of the PhD Program, School of Education, University of California, Irvine
We have seen Stephanie Coontz help a roomful of professors and clinicians accustomed to writing for professional journals turn their ideas into bright, eye-grabbing prose. Her special talent is showing people how to hone complex ideas and complex statistical data into easily digestible informative news reports that avoid cheap soundbites. The last time she issued a release on our research, we got dozens of media calls and two publishers approached us about a book project.
 Philip A. Cowan, Professor of the Graduate School and Professor of Psychology Emeritus, University of California at Berkeley; Carolyn Pape Cowan, Professor of Psychology Emerita, University of California at Berkeley
Coontz is a genius at translating empirical findings into media messages and helping others do the same. I was particularly impressed with her ability to pinpoint the most interesting messages and "take away points" across a broad array of health topics including autism, built environment and exercise, FMRI scans and empathy, and the health effects of masculinity. In short, Professor Coontz can help anyone find and communicate the public importance of their research
 Kristen W. Springer, Ph.D., M.P.H.,Robert Wood Johnson Health & Society Scholar, Columbia University
Coontz is an expert on using media to move important ideas out of the ivory tower. She showed me how to turn an earnest but unfocused draft into a polished, hard hitting op-ed featured on the homepage of CNN.
 Nancy Unger, Professor of History, Santa Clara University
Stephanie Coontz has an unmatched ability to teach other academics how to translate complex research and clinical expertise into editorials, magazine articles, and trade books. Everyone who attends her workshops comes away with important new skills. People who once fled from reporters develop respectful, mutually beneficial relationships with the press.
 Barbara Risman, Professor, Department of Sociology, University of Illinois at Chicago