Hello all!
This week’s post is about interviews and interviewing.
Interviews are necessary to give an article some zing, and to get a quote that will humanize an article.
If an article says something like, “50 people lost their homes due to the storm,” that bores me and makes me lose interest.
But if the article had a quote instead?
“My kids have lost everything,” Homeowner and mother Tammy Lynn said, “And now we have no place to even sleep right now.”
See how that changes the information and humanizes the event?
That is the power of a quote, but you can only get a quote if you have an interview.
The first step of doing pre-interview research would be doing a few simple searches of their name on search engines and major news sites.
Learn all you can about them from the Internet. How long have they worked at that company? How long since their last promotion?
If they’re a traveling athlete, figure out where they’ve been before and what they’ve done.
After you know some background about the person you want to interview, figure out what other interviewers have asked before.
You do not want to be the person who gets an exclusive interview, only to ask the same questions someone else did.
If applicable, you might be able to reach out to their workplace or family members to better your questions.
Once you have figured out the questions you want to ask, then it’s time to focus on the interview.
First, where are you going to conduct the interview? Is it going to be in a public place, like a coffee shop? Or will it be somewhere more private, like a personal office or someone’s home?
What location will make your interviewee more at ease? Are they going to share something private or something public?
Then comes actually conducting the interview.
When you ask your questions, make sure to keep your body language engaged and open. Instead of curling your shoulders in, open them up and make it clear that you trust whoever you are talking to.
Humans tend to mimic other’s body language and body language tends to affect a person’s emotions. If you have your shoulders open and relaxed, your interviewee will also become more relaxed.
Make sure to maintain natural eye contact with your interviewee because it will show that you are engaged in the conversation.
Both principles still apply even if you are conducting an interview over the phone or on Zoom. If you’re calm and relaxed, chances are that it’ll come across and your interviewee will become more relaxed too.
That being said, sometimes you aren’t able to score an interview in person. Sometimes your interviewee is too busy for even a phone call, or your interview is too short to justify an actual interview.
That’s okay! I’ll walk you through how to conduct an interview over email, and then show you an example of all the parts put together into one email.
In the first part of the email, write who you are, who you work for, and what you want. Be as concise as possible. This part should be two sentences at the most.
Then, ask for an in-person or phone interview if you haven’t yet. Getting a real-time interview is ideal, but it’s not always possible. So make sure to ask, but don’t expect anything to come of it.
After you’ve written your introduction, mention what time you need your answers back by. If you don’t, your interviewee might email back the answers a week after the article was supposed to be posted.
This is where you’ll put the questions you have to ask. Make sure to only ask at most six questions. Any longer and it should be an in-person interview.
Make sure to create both open and closed questions to encourage natural conversation flow, even if it’s via text.
Then, thank the person for their time, and remind them one last time about when you need your responses by.
Leave your name, and the email and phone number that you can be contacted by as your sign off.
Example email below:
Hello! My name is Dwayne Johnson, a journalist for White House Publications. I would like to interview you about the recent scandal that has come to light about The Rock Industries.
Would you be available for a short interview within the next two weeks?
If that is not possible, please respond to the questions below and email them back by 9/30/23 at 12 p.m. Thank you!
- Question 1
- Question 2
- Question 3
- Question 4
- Question 5
- Question 6
Thank you for your time! Again, please email me back by 9/30 at 12 p.m.
Sincerely,
Dwayne Johnson
1 (800) 224-5678 | djohnson@whp.org
For more reading regarding interviews, some links are attached.
Columbia Journalism: http://www.columbia.edu/itc/journalism/isaacs/edit/MencherIntv1.html
American Psychological Association: https://www.apa.org/pubs/authors/working-with-media
Image Credits:
https://gsb.hse.ru/en/careercentre/career/interview