ban e-mail "interviews"

yah but I can blame village voice for squandering an opportunity to fund out something interesting about them. and email interviews for not making it easy on them.

so yeah, email 'interviews' are totally the worst thing ever right?

people are SO unreliable! smh

I used to be 100% against doing email intvus (though I did at least one intvu by fax in the late 90s). But circumstances have necessitated a few times and I've had a few great experiences and a couple of annoying ones.
Last year I had an email exchange from Hawaii with a filmmaker who was in Berlin. I had enough lead time and he was generous enough with his time that I just kept sending follow up questions & he kept replying right up until I finished the article.
But I much prefer phoners--90% of my "journalism" has been 600-wd profiles of touring musicians previewing upcoming shows, so the physical possibility of an in-person interview is remote--because It feels like I then own the interview. As much as skipping transcription saves agony, waiting on an email response if unknowable usefulness is 1000 times worse. Or if you have to suddenly change tack. Many times the questions I've thought would be the key to getting good quotes produced nothing and then I've been able to just talk through or get the subject to talk it through and find something unexpected.
And over the phone, no one can see me roll my eyes. I have a wide range of rhetorical tools at hand via telephone, my clumsy social awkwardness becomes a Columbo-esque asset. In person, I'm just a self-conscious dork.

I think e-mail interviews are really unprofessional. I quit my last job because I had an E-MAIL argument with an unprofessional e-mail interviewer. (She could not SPELL and was evasive in her questions). The interviewer actually called my boss to complain about my annoyed response to the e-mailer's unprofessional conduct.

So like my boss had too many questions about "what I said" in my e-mail and I said screw it, they were unprofessional and I'm sick of this place anyway. I said, "I'm doing you a favor by leaving if you take her side".

transcribing and recording phone interviews is a lot harder than an email interview, but you know what, that's your job y'all. email inties are significantly worse imho.

^^

The tone and the meanderings of a conversational interview will naturally be different than an email interview. A conversation allows more of the interviewee's personality to come across, especially if they have a quick wit.

But I can see where an email interview could be a stronger, better interview under certain circumstances. Most definitely email could shine where there is a lot of substance and nuance, and both parties are gifted writers and are giving the exchange their full attention.

there are basically two scenarios that happen in every e-mail interview -- either the interviewee is a terrible typist or just not very good at expressing themselves in text form, and the whole thing is a mess, or they type out such long, articulate, considered answers that the interviewer is rendered irrelevent and you realize the piece should just be redone as an essay by the subject.

In my experience, e-mail interviews are fine as a form - like when you give the same interview to everyone who applies. But when it comes across as a personal haphazard and (sometimes) poorly spelled e-mail, it's a bad idea, it says you either don't care or don't have time to find the best candidate.

I thought the purpose of an e-mail interview was to just get the basic information about an applicant...idiosyncratic communications aren't always clearly understood by the recipient.

It would appear that some of the people in this thread are talking about journalistic interviews and others are talking about job interviews. This situation has the potential for confusion.

every time i've skimmed to thread to see if anyone talked about anything besides journalism i didn't see anything that really pertained to job interviews

email interviews seem to be shit for v similar reasons whether regarding journalism or jobs

Yeah this thread is about like, interviewing bands and such, right? not going for jobs (who would do that by email!??!?!?)

Nah i like em

Often I've found that non-native English speakers much prefer them. These days I will always confer directly with an editor if an interview subject says they prefer that.