ban e-mail "interviews"

NPR tells me if terry gross is face to face w/ someone or just hearing them in her headphones.

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:19 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

factoid: terry gross is never face to face w/her subjects, if theyre in the same building theyre in another studio, it her thing iirc

"With their stunning new album the so-and-so's reinvent their cultlike status into a broader acceptance of their inverting of past standards and futuristic beat science of riffs."

anyway, i say all this as someone who was outright terrified of doing interviews when i was 19 - and the option of email then didn't really exist (people were still getting used to it, lol), so i had to put on a brave face and talk to people. fake it til you make it. the truth is: most real interviews are exciting and interesting for all involved! who knew

Eh I'd put mine at about 1/3 exciting etc., 1/3 neutral, 1/3 'you are my twentieth interviewer today and I already hate you' 'uh...so tell me what your new album is like'

re: "awkwardness" in phone interviews - this is called doing your job

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:58 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

make the conversation happen

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:58 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um, i dont know what contenderizer meant about social anxiety, because thats not really my issue with phone interviews, its more about dealing w/ people who are sticking to scripts as is ... this happens a bunch in i imagine all forms of journalism? in person, there's something to talk about -- grady was joking, but, like, truffle fries! for real! when i interviewed gorilla zoe dude ate like 3 sandwiches or something iirc & that detail went into the interview, since he was straying from the "just gotta keep hustling" script not at all (i did get him to talk about his first tapes but that was about as interesting as it got)

phone makes it way way way harder to pick at those kinds of details. i dunno, maybe i also just hate talking on the phone like max. it doesnt feel any more 'unnatural' to me than email at some level -- in a different way, sure, but its still a really disconnected 'dialogue' imo

i guess email doesnt really move away from a script either if thats the issue, but my point was more about the actual details of your interaction with them -- the way they move / what they do / their tics etc -- can make it into the work. that stuff is all lost over the phone anyway

yeah but then its lost even more via email isnt it?

i dont know what contenderizer meant about social anxiety, because thats not really my issue with phone interviews

was mostly a joke

you can hear someone eating a sandwich over the phone

in email it wouldnt even come up

"so what are you doing right now"

"sitting in front of my computer"

yeah i just mean that compared w/ the gulf between in-person interaction, where you get to *know* the person, is a much bigger one, so phone or email it feels like you lose some / either way, just in slightly different ways

um, another thing is that until skype i had no way to record stuff over a cell phone, which is the only phone line i have

so there were practical issues

i mean i still have tapes from when i did phone interviews back when i was 19 & record to a land line.

maybe i just feel like the phone interview is such a halfway pt between 'emailed correspondence' & 'in person discussion' that it feels like a compromise of both or something idk ive been sorta thinking this through as i go along tbh

in email interviews you can *flounce off* without actually, physically flouncing off

Pervert.

in case it wasnt clear i agree w/ grady that the medium of the interview should be revealed yes

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Journalists have a descipable reputation and folks realize this and try to limit communication to the most discretionary form possible.

despicable!

Sufferin succotash.

fwiw if i had to choose someone to interview/write a profile on me/ someone I represented based on this thread I'd pick rrrobyn

yeah dude we got it

everyone hates transcribing

I kinda like it...?

You sick fuck.

I hope this is how Ned responds to questions in his email interviews.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it can be super-tedious (and I haven't done it for years), but I like paying attention to the way people speak.

yeah if you journalists hate hard work so much maybe you should become sandwich artists or something idk

I did, but I was told I didn't chop the mayonnaise properly.

yeah if you journalists hate hard work so much maybe you should become sandwich artists or something idk

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i think u are assuming im getting paid for this stuff

sorry deej, I was addressing the *professional* journalists on this thread

lol yah just bein defensive

pfork doesn't pay?

i write reviews for them

In 1993 or so, our magazine did a Future Sound of London feature over email because OMG THE COMING TECH REVOLUTION, but obviously we 'sold' it as such to the reader and included emoticons, etc in the text (our creative director claims to have invented the emoticon back in the days of Letraset). Then we have these heavy-visual issues where subjects fill in the exact same questionnaire, which are nightmarish to chase and collect once sent and completely anodyne in the hands of models or over-packaged performing artists - when we do them, I can surmise that some fucker has spent the features budget, basically.

Mostly I'm writing 2000+ word features about a single individual, so I'm forever having to tell PRs things like 'no, a phoner is completely unacceptable, we need something a bit more uh interactive for a story of this size' UGH THE WORD 'PHONER' but I will do it if, say, the subject is on another continent. I don't do email interviews and will only do follow-up questions via email direct to the subject. Today, most methods presented to journalists as being terribly convenient ways of covering a subject are thinly disguised methods for PRs to control the process. I often feel like doing a Journalism 101 chat with publicists trying to 'manage' me or my colleagues beyond what I consider appropriate, or whose remit seems to include sitting in on the interview - it makes me feel rude/uncomfortable to have someone present who is not in the conversation or is there to silently curb invasive questions I'd normally blame my editor for making me ask. I often mention the editorial assistant we sacked for sending copy on to a gallery publicist before publication, which shuts 95 per cent of PRs the hell up when they ask to 'check facts' before the piece is published.

if transcribing phone conversations bugs you put it up on Amazon MTurk, some Indian/Dutch/Eastern European idiot will do it for 1 dollar per 5 minutes of audio (or less!)

I hate transcription but I won't let anyone else touch my recordings. I've been gearing up to a 90 minute interview transcription for about two weeks and am dreading it.

email interviews surely only good for small puff pieces that don't go into depth - the kind of featurette where all you need out of the artist is basic info & opinions. for anything remotely substantial they're inadequate. a good interview isn't a list of questions, it's a conversation where you bounce ideas and react to what the interviewee says. i guess you could do back-and-forth emails but i don't trust anyone to respond in a timely manner and i don't want to be sitting around waiting for someone to get back to me when, in person, the entire exchange could take 15 minutes.

and that's before you get into what suzy describes, where the "email interview" is just an opportunity to give PR-led non-answers.

transcription is actual hell but like suzy you mostly should do it yourself because picking up on the nuances of the conversation is pretty valuable to writing the piece.

phone/skype interviews are nowhere near ideal either, there's that distance and awkwardness, and as an interviewer i tend to want to feel vaguely in control and relaxed, which i can't do if i have to shout "hello? HELLO? can you hear me?" every few minutes. but obviously sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Is Google Voice practical for transcribing interviews yet? Not available in UK afaik. These days tbh I am kinda glad when people offer email rather than phoner, especially if it's just for a three-question review sidebar because a) no transcription b) no endless rescheduling of calls across timezones c) no clearing your evening to wait by the phone for a phone call that never comes (I'm looking at YOU Mr Lou Reed) d) no dealing with the interviewee's shitty mobile reception/inability to speak into the phone e) no dealing with shitty phone recording devices not recording properly... BUT... they always turn out terrible, you can't press people to be more specific, no conversational "vibe" or w/e.

Half the time the PR is just trying to Be Important so they can talk about how they liaised or actioned or otherwise verbed a noun in their report to their boss, so it's not altogether inappropriate for me to hit them back with 20 years of doing it my way. My friend spent virtually all of last week dealing with obtuse fashion PRs and their on-again, off-again subject and finally told them to GTFO on a Saturday afternoon because he was that sick of playing hurry up and wait. For those short things, 10 minutes on the phone is perfectly adequate - I never do a full transcript for a very short piece because it's easy to go in and find the whopperquote you're going to use, check the facts they gave you and write around both with something resembling your own opinion and reaction to what's said. Bingo, 500 words in 20 minutes! I can talk the back legs off a donkey on the phone, and get some amazing responses that way - Liv Tyler stoner conversation, I'm looking at YOU - as long as there's an unmediated one-on-one conversation as base material for my work, I'm good. I did a great phone chat with Machine Florence last year, but we have some friends in common and she wanted to talk about her American side, so that worked well under the circs.

Other classic responses to control freaks: 'a lot of people are concerned that your client sounds a bit over-managed in the pieces we've seen, I know she's more spontaneous/fun than that, so we thought it would be more interesting to the reader to shake things up a bit' or, if things get serious, 'if you really want to sit in this interview, I have no choice but to say in the feature that you didn't want to leave your subject alone with a writer and that is never flattering'. I have been known to invoke the reader's interest A LOT in service to appearing more self-effacing than I actually am.

rrrobyn and suzy otm

in person >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> phone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> email

like, if that person lives in your town there is no reason not to do it in person

i've never really minded a PR person sitting in on an interview, though every time that's actually happened they've been unobtrusive, haven't interrupted and i haven't felt inhibited.

i don't even do full transcripts for longer pieces! get yr quotes, type whatever notes that come to mind, jot down times of exchanges you might need to go back to, fin.

i never knew that terry gross doesn't sit in the same room as her interviewees, wtf?? very strange

I did one the other day. Sent some questions on a tight deadline, ended up with single sentence or two word replies.

in person >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> phone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> email

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:30 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think this should really go without saying, but ppl in this thread are defending email interviews because a lot of times they happen and there's no way around it. I do them all the time, but because they're exponentially easier; not because they're better

i think the most important part of interviewing is getting interesting stories out of dull people, and finessing that is impossible over email.

What Whiney said. Also, I can't imagine this problem is unique to me but artists are sometimes really terrible at answering my questions (on phone or over the email) and so I have to keep asking the same question over and over again in different words until they actually answer it. You can't just fill an email with the same question written differently 10 times. Or you can, but then you can't be surprised when the artist just copy/pastes their (not helpful) answer 10 times.

yeah you def have to approach questions from different angles a lot of the time. i'd disagree that email interviews are necessary - follow-up questions apart, i've only had to do email interviews for one piece, which was sheer bad timing rather than anyone's request (last-minute commission when i was out of town for 3 weeks on another job) - given the nature of it (the artists weren't the focus of the piece) it should've been (and was) fine, but even then it was frustrating not being able to ask for clarifications &c. other than that i've never had to do an email interview.

(and like suzy would not accept a request for one without protesting)

they're pretty necessary for me, timewise