dealing-with-reporters

dealing-with-reporters is a skill for Claude Code from kalyvask/winning-writing. It costs 158 tokens per session (2,818 once invoked), scanned A, original, MIT.

A writing guide for answering reporters and handling press inquiries, including on-the-record statements and explanations of off-the-record, background, and deep-background conversations.

In plain words
What is it for?
It is for drafting or reviewing reporter responses, crisis communications, press statements, and other media interactions.
Why use it?
It helps people respond clearly during sensitive situations without making avoidable statements or misunderstanding how their comments may be attributed.

Skill for Claude Code

Written for Claude Code: shipped in a Claude Code plugin.

Part of the winning-writing plugin — 32 skills shipped together

Good fit It is for drafting or reviewing reporter responses, crisis communications, press statements, and other media interactions.

Compare 6 skills from other repositories ↓
Install with agentmods
npx agentmods add skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters
Install

Getting it into your agent

One page per mod, every tool's command on it. A separate URL per tool would split the same page into five that compete with each other.

Any agent
npx skills add kalyvask/winning-writing --skill dealing-with-reporters
Clone the repo
git clone --depth 1 https://github.com/kalyvask/winning-writing

Made for: Claude Code.

Or install winning-writing, the plugin that ships this one along with the rest of its 32 skills.

Wrote this? Show the measurements

A badge with what this costs and how it scanned, read live from this page, so it follows the numbers instead of freezing them. Markdown for a README, HTML for a documentation site or a project page.

agentmods badge for dealing-with-reporters

README.md
[![agentmods](https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters/github.svg)](https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters)
Your own site
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters/github.svg" alt="Measured on agentmods" height="20"></a>

Or the 80×15 button, for a site that already has a row of RSS and ATOM ones. Only the verdict fits; the numbers stay here.

agentmods 80×15 button for dealing-with-reporters

Your own site · 80×15
<a href="https://agentmods.dev/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters"><img src="https://agentmods.dev/badge/skills/kalyvask/winning-writing/dealing-with-reporters.svg" alt="Reviewed on agentmods" width="80" height="20"></a>
Per session 158 Skills are progressive disclosure: only the name and description are preloaded; the body loads when the skill is used.
When invoked 2,818 The whole file, excluding the scripts and references it only reads on demand.
Security scan A 0 findings. A grade says what 26 rules found in the file — not that it is safe. Third-party audits
  • NVIDIA SkillSpector warn 7 Sept 2026
SkillSpector: 1 finding, up to high

These are SkillSpector’s own severities. On a checked sample its high-severity flags on skills were ~96% false positives — a documented command, a public API, a “never do X” rule — so we show them as a caution to read, not a verdict. Why →

  • high Anti-Refusal · line 90
    Skill instructs the agent to omit warnings, disclaimers, or ethical commentary. Stripping safety caveats hides risk from the user and is a common jailbreak preamble.
    Fix: Remove instructions that suppress warnings, disclaimers, or ethical commentary. Let the agent surface safety-relevant caveats to the user.
How audits are shown
Origin original No closer match found in the catalogue.
Token cost

What it costs to keep this loaded

Counted locally with the o200k_base tokenizer, which is exact for GPT models; Claude uses its own tokenizer and its counts differ. Treat this as one consistent yardstick across the catalogue rather than a bill. Prices are per million input tokens.

ModelPer sessionOnce invoked
Fable 5.1 $0.00158 $0.02818
Opus 5 $0.00079 $0.01409
Sonnet 5 $0.00032 $0.00564
Haiku 4.5 $0.00016 $0.00282

Measured 12d ago against content hash 395926e14947, method: parsed. Prices are Anthropic first-party input rates as of 2026-09-12, from the pricing page.

Security

Grade A, and why

dealing-with-reporters scanned grade A with 0 findings against 26 rules in 11 categories — prompt injection, anti-refusal, data exfiltration, privilege escalation, supply chain, agent snooping, system-prompt leakage, SSRF and excessive agency — measured 12d ago.

A static scan of the body, not an audit. Every finding is printed with the line that produced it so you can judge whether it matters here. A mod is markdown that instructs an agent; that is exactly why what it instructs is worth reading.

Nothing flagged

None of the 26 patterns this scan looks for appear in this file: no shell pipes, no recursive deletes, no credential paths, no hidden text, no instruction-override or anti-refusal phrasing, no agent-config snooping. That is not a guarantee, it is the absence of the things that are checkable.

skills/dealing-with-reporters/SKILL.md · 187 lines

How it starts

The opening of the file, as written. The whole thing — 187 lines — stays where its author put it; the contents beside it link to each section on GitHub.

Dealing with reporters

Source: Andrew Ross Sorkin (NYT DealBook / Squawk Box) and Glenn Kramon's Winning Writing class lecture on press relations. AP attribution definitions baked in.

Why this skill exists

Most executives wing it with reporters and then spend the next decade in litigation. The 11 rules below come from Sorkin, who has interviewed CEOs through every flavor of crisis since 2007, plus Kramon's three decades editing the New York Times business section. The rules are battle-tested. The tradeoffs are real.

Sorkin's 11 rules

1. Never say "no comment"

There's always something better, even if you can't say much. "I'd love to be able to walk you through this, but the investigation is still active and law enforcement has asked us not to discuss specifics yet" beats "no comment" every time. The first sentence is a quote the reporter can use without making you look evasive. The second is the actual reason.

2. Don't avoid calls

Bad feelings compound. You lose the chance to understand what the reporter is actually after, and you lose the chance to shape your side of the story. Even if you're not ready to comment, take the call and say so.

3. Know the journalist

Read their last six pieces before talking to them. Talk to peers they've quoted. Some are more trustworthy than others. You won't always have a choice — but knowing who you're dealing with changes what you say and how.

4. Build relationships before you need them

The reporter who knows your business in depth will write a more nuanced story when something goes wrong. That doesn't mean they'll be soft. It means they'll be accurate. Build the relationship in good times.

5. Address the question, tell the truth, hedge when you must

Say as much as you can confidently say. If you don't know, say so. Don't overpromise: "It won't happen again" and "We assure you our system is safe" are statements that age badly. "Based on what we know today" is the right frame.

Read the full file on GitHub · 187 lines

Changes

What this file has done since we first saw it

Hashed on every crawl. A supply-chain change to an agent config is a question of when, not whether, so the history is kept rather than the latest state alone.

  1. 12d ago First seen · 187 lines · 158 tokens per session scan A 395926e14947

Subscribe to this mod's changes

dealing-with-reporters is a skill published in the GitHub repository kalyvask/winning-writing (14 stars, last pushed 6d ago), licensed MIT. It adds 158 tokens to every session and 2,818 once invoked, about $0.0008 per session on Opus 5. A static security scan graded it A with 0 findings. No closer match exists in the catalogue, so it is treated as the original; first seen 2026-08-30.

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