Everyone understands the importance of shaping a story, but few are as shrewdly proficient at manipulating the media as L.A. crisis manager Mike Sitrick, who the Los Angeles Times has called “The Wizard of Spin.” A celebrity, arrested for soliciting a prostitute or going on a drunken rampage, confronted with a frenzied pack of reporters, is likely to call Sitrick, whose firm has defended and rebuilt the reputations of scores of entertainers, athletes, and other high-profile clients caught in the media glare. (His clients have included Paris Hilton, Rush Limbaugh, Michael Vick, and Chris Brown to name a few, as well as embattled companies and high-profile executives, many of whom Sitrick can only discuss off the record, if at all.)

Sitrick, whose uncanny ability to assess and understand the intricacies of how the media behaves and what makes an individual journalist tick, has a lot to teach anyone about how to deal with the media. His advice in a nutshell: “If you don’t tell your story, someone else will tell it for you.”

1. Strike fast. When a high-profile client calls and says, “CBS Evening News is outside my door. What should I do?” we have to get the facts, assess the situation, and establish a strategy in a matter of minutes. We have to know immediately who to contact and how. Some people worry about having the last word; my concern is getting the first and last word. Get your story out first so you can set the tone for the coverage that follows.

2. Prepare the client. Powerful people don’t like being challenged, but a crucial part of my job is telling the emperor or empress they have no clothes. CEOs wield incredible power, but I often have to explain to them that they can’t control the press. A celebrity might be able to act, but what if they don’t come across sympathetically in front of a camera after being been accused of shoplifting or trashing a hotel room? Before we put a client in front of reporters or cameras we rehearse them very carefully, the way a lawyer would. Tiger Woods isn’t a client of mine, but before his apologia press conference I would have rehearsed him, shot a video, and if it had come off the way it aired, I’d have done it differently.

3. Know when to do nothing. A journalist is taught to ask who, what, where, when, why, and how. In my business, we add “so what?” Does anybody care? About 20% of the time, I tell a client: “Do nothing.” You can take a small matter and turn it into a major crisis, if it’s handled wrong.

4. Identify your audience. When a client comes to us, one of our first questions is: “Who is the audience you’re aiming your message at?” For an actor in a crisis, that audience could be his fans, the movie studios, or sponsors. For a CEO, it could be his company’s investors or government officials. The former wife of a hugely successful rock star came to us. She had been drugged and beaten by her ex-husband. She was suing the star for damages. But his lawyers wouldn’t even return her lawyers’ phone calls. Her audience, we determined, was three parties: her former husband, his record company, and his lawyers. She was reluctant to go public with her story, but we convinced her that because of the nature of the physical abuse she’d suffered, we could use the media to reach her intended audience. We decided People magazine was the right venue. They put her on the cover. The impact was predictably huge. Her story generated enormous media interest, and of course, the record company put immediate pressure on her ex-husband’s lawyers to avoid further damage to the rock star’s reputation. Not only did the lawyers take her calls, they settled the suit shortly after.

5. Tell a story. Almost all news people believe in the power of the “story.” Regardless of how actual events occur, journalists believe that the best way to recount these events is in the form of a story with a beginning, middle, and an end, with drama, conflict, and surprising twists. This might be a highly stylized–even sensationalized–way of reporting on events, but this way of thinking is so internalized by members of the media that to get your message across to them, you have to present that message in the form of a story, sometimes with clearly drawn heroes and villains.