| CHAPTER 10 | |
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Interviewing |
We gather much of our sound through interviews, so how well we do in the field and on the phone determines what we have to work with later on. AS with many things in life, the more interviews we conduct, the better we tend to get.
An interview is any exchange during which the news reporter or writer collects information. In radio, interviewing is most commonly done on the phone. That’s not nearly as good as doing it in person, but it’s efficient. Even in television, we conduct many—perhaps most—interviews on the phone. Even our calls to set up interviews are in many cases interviews themselves. After all, we need to know that the prospective interviewee really has something to say, will say it to us and can say it well.
We also deal in mass interviews. Those include news conferences at which the speaker or speakers take questions. We also conduct interviews in groups— some newsmakers call them packs—in which we question a city council member, the police chief, a hospital spokesperson and so on.
At least in television and some radio stations, most of our important interviews for most of our important stories are done in person, one on one. Here are a dozen tips to make those experiences better and more enlightening for you, the person you’re interviewing and the audience.
CONDUCTING SUCCESSFUL INTERVIEWS
Plan
Going into a major interview on an investigative story will obviously require extensive planning, but you should plan for every interview you do. Why are you interviewing this person? What are you after? What would make this a successful interview? How does—or might—this interview fit in with others? If you can’t answer those questions, how will you know what to ask? If you can’t answer those questions, how will you know when to stop?
Inexperienced reporters commonly conduct long interviews. That’s frequently because they don’t know what they’re after, and if you don’t know where you’re going, it can take a long time to get there. That creates two problems. You use too much time conducting an overlong interview, and then you use too much time going through the whole interview to figure out what you have. Time is too precious for that.
Even on breaking news, there’s planning to be done. Take a house fire, for example. You’ve got a few minutes in the car on the way. Think about what kind of story it’s likely to be. Who do you talk with first? Who’s next? Who comes after that?
The answers matter because people leave and memories and emotions fade. Resist the temptation to start with the fire chief. If you talk to the chief at all, do so at the end. First are the people who live there. They’re most involved in the story, and depending on damage and injuries, they may leave. Remember, the best bites are personal accounts, and this is where you get them. Next come the neighbors. They’re potential witnesses, and they’re readily available. Soon, they won’t be. Talking to them when they’re outside watching is usually easy. Once they go into their homes and shut the doors, you’ll have a harder time convincing them to talk. Then interview the firefighters. Pick the dirtiest ones first. They’re the people with the greatest personal involvement in the fire. Remember what makes for good bites. The hard data that the fire chief may be able to supply you also belongs in the story, but you’re almost always better off incorporating it into your script.
Keep in mind how people think and what’s important to them. After people and pets the next greatest loss involves personal items—especially pictures. We have insurance for furniture and clothing and other largely meaningless possessions. The real value lies in the stuff of our lives that can’t be readily replaced. But if you didn’t plan or think about these things, would you watch for and see them? When you see people picking through the rubble after the fire or earthquake or tornado, think about what it is they’re really looking for.
Listen
Without question, listening is the most critical skill you must develop to be a good interviewer. Don’t simply hear; listen to every word.
Generally, the biggest impediment to listening is our inability to cope with silence. Especially starting out, we’re frequently so concerned about what we’re going to ask next that we’re not listening closely enough. we’re worried that the person will stop talking, and we won’t know what to say, so we focus inward instead of outward.
If it will help you to focus on the people you’re interviewing, make a few notes of topic areas and put them in your pocket. Use that short list as your security blanket to enable you to focus on the people you’re interviewing. All your attention and energy must go toward these people. If you pay enough attention—to what they have to say, how they say it, what they don’t say and body language—they’ll tell you where to go next. In most cases, the best question to ask next comes logically out of the previous answer. Remember that ideally, this is just a conversation between two people in which the person being interviewed does most of the talking.
Technical Concerns
In broadcast we generally record our interviews, and you must record high-quality sound and pictures. The audience will notice technical flaws before anything else, and all of the audience will notice. Get it right.
In radio, listen to the environment and make sure there are no distracting noises that will ruin the recording. The same goes for TV, and you also need to think about focus, framing, light and color—among other things.
Always check your equipment in advance. Make sure you have everything; make sure it’s working; and make sure you know how to operate it.
Make the Interviewee Comfortable
In breaking news stories, you interview people where and when you can. In other cases, location can make or break an interview. The more comfortable the people you’re talking with, the more open and forthcoming they’re likely to be.
People are usually most comfortable in their own homes, so that’s frequently a good place to conduct interviews. Offices pose more of a challenge. That desk they’re sitting behind serves as both a physical and a psychological barrier. Try to avoid having to contend with those kinds of obstacles. Look for a couple of comfortable chairs or another site. In radio, a conference room may work. In television, look for an interview site with a background that helps tell the story. Offices make common but boring backgrounds.
Watch out for the telephone. Once the phone starts to ring, the interview is over—at least temporarily. The ringing makes that spot in the recording unusable, and the distraction derails everyone’s train of thought. Try to get the phone turned off (both desk phone and cell phone), have phone calls held or move someplace where there’s less chance of a distraction, such as outdoors.
Remember that many of the people we interview are nervous about the whole process. They’re worried about how they’ll look, what they might say, how they’ll sound and whether they’ll do a good job. Nervous people give poor interviews. Make them comfortable, and make them comfortable talking with you. The more they talk before the interview, the more comfortable they’re likely to get. But don’t talk about the interview subject. Talk about the weather, talk about sports, talk about pictures on the office wall—talk about anything except the subject at hand. Generally, you’ll get good, animated, responses to your questions one time. If you’re not recording when they first say it, you’ve lost the moment. The second time around, the life will be sapped out, and the person will say things like, “Well, like I told you before.…” But since the audience didn’t hear it before, that kind of comment should not be used on the air.
Ask Questions That Deliver What You’re After
Questions that start with Do, Are and When are fine as long as answers like Yes, No,and Yesterday are what you’re looking for—and they may be. If you’re after hard data, concrete information, questions that start with Do, Are and When may be the fastest way to get it. But if you’re after usable bites to put on the air, it would be dumb luck if those questions generated worthwhile bites.
If you’re after bites, ask people to Explain something. Ask Why or How come.Ask people to Describe what they saw, heard, felt, smelled or tasted. Those are most likely to produce good bites.
Again, the issue comes back to planning. If you know what you’re after, it can help frame your questions so that you get what you need.
Unless you’re attending a White House news conference and have one chance to ask the president something, don’t ask complicated, multipart questions. Don’t make speeches. Generally, don’t share your personal experiences. Train yourself to be brief and direct. The more straightforward you are, the better the responses will be.
The fewer words you use in your questions—delivered cleanly and crisply— the greater flexibility you have in putting together the story. A one- or two-word response to a question commonly won’t work for a bite. But sometimes it can—if you asked the question in about the same amount of time. It is possible to make a quick series of tight questions and answers into a bite. Given the difficulties in interviewing young children and teenagers, this approach may be your best shot at usable bites with difficult groups or individuals.
Generally, start with the easiest, least controversial questions and end with the hardest. First, the more comfortable someone is talking to you, the more likely that person is to respond. Second, even if the interviewee is so offended by a tough question that the interview is terminated, at least you have something. Third, most controversial decisions made sense to someone at the time. So you’re better off starting with questions that take the interviewee back before the critical moment you want to ask about.
Use Silence
That same silence that you’re uncomfortable with (see the earlier section entitled “Listen”) generally works the same way for the person you’re interviewing. You can use that as a technique. After an answer that may seem incomplete, don’t say anything. Just look at the person expectantly, as if to say, “Where’s the rest of the answer?” Frequently, that’s when the person, uncomfortable with the silence and/or perhaps sensing your lack of understanding, will blurt out the real story. It’s not about tricking someone; it’s about searching for the truth. If the person just looks back at you and smiles, she knows about the technique. In that case, just move on.
Maintain Strong Eye Contact
Don’t stare at interviewees, but do engage them. Strong eye contact demands that someone look back at you. It says you’re interested and involved. It says you care. It also helps to take someone’s mind off the equipment, and in the case of television, it increases the odds that the person you’re interviewing will look back at you and not at the camera.
It’s hard to maintain strong eye contact if you’re reading questions from a pad of paper. If you need that kind of preparation because it’s a complex story with lots of data you must refer to, then you do it. Otherwise, you’re always better off acting like a real person asking questions, rather than reading from a prepared script.
Learn to Respond Inaudibly
Almost everyone in the business learns this the hard way. You need to respond to the person you’re interviewing, or the person will stop talking. But if you respond out loud, you’ll ruin the audio. Many interesting interviews never made it on the air because constant uh huh, uhhh, okay, I see responses simply made the audio unusable. Maintaining good eye contact helps. Nodding is all right, but mindlessly bobbing your head up and down could make it appear that you’re agreeing to some sort of outrageous comment the person is making. Facial expressions help. But there should be no sound.
Follow Up and Clarify
Any time the person you’re interviewing uses a name that you (and/or the audience) don’t know, a technical term that you don’t understand, or a peculiar phrasing that isn’t clear, you have an interruption in the flow of information. In all likelihood you can’t use that material on the air because the audience won’t understand.
If this happens in a live interview, you must interrupt and clarify the point right then. Otherwise, you’ve lost the audience, who will be puzzled over what they don’t understand. In a recorded interview, you can wait until the person finishes the sentence or thought and then go back for an explanation.
This is another critical reason to listen. If you’re not paying full attention, you’ll miss the problem spots in an interview, and you won’t hear the kinds of statements that require follow-up questions to make sure you—and the audience—understand.
Maintain Control
Never hand over the microphone to someone else. This is your interview, and you have to remain in charge. It’s up to you to maintain the technical quality; interviewees who take the mike from you will commonly not use it properly on themselves and will almost never hold the mike in a way to pick up your comments or questions. Without the microphone you have no way to interject to clarify; you’re completely at someone else’s mercy. If you give up the mike, you’re no longer conducting the interview.
Ask for More … Twice
In an important interview, it’s frequently a good idea, at the very end, to ask whether there’s anything you missed, any ground not covered. In most cases the answer will be no, but sometimes people will come up with pertinent material. Occasionally, it’s something useful for the story at hand. More likely, if there’s anything at all, it’s an interesting, related point. While it may not belong in the story you’re working on, it may be a great story idea or nugget for a future story. Make note. You should always be collecting future story ideas.
Finally, after you shut off the equipment, watch for a sigh of relief. The interviewee survived. If you see this happen, ask again whether there’s anything you missed. “Well,” the person might say, “of course I can’t really say much about such and such.” Now comes the dilemma. Technically, of course, you’re still on the record, you’re just not recording. But what is the perception of the person you’re talking to? If it’s a politician, he or she knows the rule, and, absent a clear understanding, everything is on the record. Not so with others. In any case, your job as a reporter is to convince them to let you turn your equipment back on and talk about this unexplored area. If you work at it—and care—most of the time you’ll succeed.
Make Notes Afterward
No camera or recorder will register every nuance you may have seen or noticed. Telling details such as the weakness of a handshake, an odor of stale cigars or the chill of a drafty room can make or break a story. Pay attention to these things, and make notes right away. Later, in the rush to air, it’s easy to forget, and then they’re lost forever.
BEYOND THE INTERVIEW
Being Human
The toughest interview is the “grieving widow”—the person (widow or otherwise) who has just suffered a loss. It might be a fatal car accident, a drowning or a tornado. How do we talk to the person in grief? Should we talk to that person at all?
In some respects the answers vary depending on the particulars and the particular reporter. Without question, some people in grief will be highly offended at the notion of speaking to a reporter. But others find the experience cathartic or an opportunity to publicly memorialize the victim. Don’t prejudge how you think someone should behave. It’s really not up to you to pre-censure what someone should or should not say.
Be a human being first. Without a recorder or camera aimed and running, offer the sympathy any human being would extend to another. Offer to talk if the person would like to. Make yourself available. If people are interested or willing, they’ll say so. If not, you wouldn’t have gotten a usable bite anyway. In either case you’ll be able to sleep better at night.
Never ask victims of tragedy how they feel.If you don’t know the answer to that question already, go into a different field.
A Closing Thought
One advantage that we have in this business is that we do record our interviews. That means the audience gets to hear exactly what someone sounds like, and it means that our quotes are completely accurate.
It also means we get a chance to learn from every interview we conduct. Don’t just listen to your interviews for good bites; listen to learn about interviewing and yourself. How were your questions? Did you listen completely? What can you learn to make the next interview better?
SUMMARY
The quality of our bites and actualities depends heavily on the quality of our interviews. This chapter contains a dozen points for better interviewing: (1) Plan. (2) Listen. (3) Get the technical side right. (4) Make the interviewee comfortable. (5) Ask questions that deliver what you’re after. (6) Use silence. (7) Maintain strong eye contact. (8) Learn to respond inaudibly. (9) Follow up and clarify. (10) Maintain control. (11) Ask for more—twice. (12) Make notes afterward. Be human, and remember that a good interview is generally just two people having a conversation—with the interviewee doing most of the talking. Never ask victims of tragedy how it feels.
KEY WORDS & PHRASES
plan
listen
the use of silence
strong eye contact
follow up and clarify
maintain control
ask for more
EXERCISES
A. Come up with three solid story ideas (no profiles allowed) based on interviewing people not like you. That means no college or graduate students. Find out what their concerns and interests are … and what stories they think the media have ignored. Write two paragraphs on what they had to say, include their name and a way to reach them—either phone or email, and a third paragraph based on your research that either determines that the proposed story idea is valid—or that it’s not. And why.
B. Watch one of the Sunday morning talk show like Face the Nation (CBS), Meet the Press (NBC) or This Week (ABC). What did you notice about the interviewing? What worked and what didn’t? Make a list of the three best questions the interviewer asked. What made them good?
C. Watch a 60 Minutes or CBS Sunday Morning piece that’s primarily an interview. What did you notice about that interview, and how did it compare to the Sunday morning talk show? What were the best questions the interviewer asked?
D. Record at least one of the interviews in A. Pick out the best bites from the interview you conducted and evaluate the questions you asked that elicited the best answers. What do you notice about those questions? Make a list of your three best and three least effective questions. Explain why each question made the list.