There were two ways to interview story subjects when I was starting out in the newspaper business: in person and on the phone.
I still remember the very first interview I ever did. It was in my first few weeks of journalism school, and my assignment was to call someone from the Regina real estate association to talk about sky-high interest rates.
This was 1981, when double digit interest rates were causing financial turmoil for families across the country. I don’t remember the details of the interview, but I’m assuming the news wasn’t positive.
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By the way, the interview was done over the phone. I remember that the anxiety I experienced while trying to muster up the courage to actually dial the number (remember rotary phones, anyone?) was similar to when I phoned a girl for a date in high school for the first time.
Time marches on, and many, many interviews were conducted in the ensuing years, all in person or on the phone.
However, in the last decade or so an innovation has been introduced to newspaper reporting — the email interview.
Allowing story subjects to answer questions by email is sometimes the only way to acquire the information that reporters need, but it’s definitely not ideal.
Follow-up questions are an essential interviewing technique, and the opportunity to ask them is lost when story subjects answer by email. Sure, the reporter can email in the follow-up question, but the spontaneity and conversational flow evaporates.
I have also imagined a story subject receiving questions by email and then hashing over the answers with a bunch of other people in the office before crafting the final answer — sort of like interview by committee.
Like I said, not ideal.
I recently read a newspaper story that, while based on an in-person interview, certainly had that “interview by committee” vibe.
The story subject wasn’t fluent in English and so had not one but two translators. The reporter would ask a question, the subject and the translators would talk it over for a bit and then one of the translators would offer up a reply in English.
Sometimes both translators would answer at the same time, often with slightly different answers.
That was a new one, and something I hope The Western Producer doesn’t have to deal with any time soon.
