ban e-mail "interviews"

i like to know if the person being interviewed is eating truffle-oil french fries or not

in email it's just so easy for people to get away with not really explaining themselves/their work! like, you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?" and then you actually get the real, interesting answer!

you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?"

Depends on whether or not you follow up on that, though. Referring to my initial examples above -- didn't have space for that in the short local piece as mentioned, it was essentially a one-shot. But the Ilyas Ahmed interview had a lot of back and forth that grew out of his initial answers, pursuing observations in more detail, etc.

i hate transcribing so much

i also hate talking on the phone

ultimately I see it all as an expansion of the tools of the trade, and therefore the writer's palette (as it were).

right i feel this, and despite my baiting thread title, i mostly agree. my bigger issue is that its not common practice to disclose it the way NPR tells me if terry gross is face to face w/ someone or just hearing them in her headphones.

in email it's just so easy for people to get away with not really explaining themselves/their work! like, you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?" and then you actually get the real, interesting answer!

TOTALLY this gets back to my fist point/frustration as a reader. But I feel like the inverse is true as well, that an interviewee can have time to carefully select their words and i end up getting a well-edited artist statement not an "interview".

everyone hates transcribing

my fist point

I can see this.

haha

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

Terry Gross is from what I can tell mostly listening to elfin ghosts in her skull.

Ned i love that we've spent more time on this thread together that any other recent thread considering: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=107&boardid=63&threadid=703

i see ned's point - and it really depends on who you're interviewing and what it's for - like, if it's for a big project or a book, then obv you're going to have some email correspondence. and certainly if the person in question has passed away, you're going to go on a search for other sources. all of which would be declared rather than be passed off as direct interviews though.
i'm all for more tools of the trade, for sure, but to write an original article for publication, you really want to have original conversations with the subjects of that article. there's an excitement and surprise in conversations that isn't found in most email 'interviews', and i think that translates into the final article.

xpost -- Remember the past. (And the still angry Manics fans, at least I assume they're still angry.)

i'm also not talking primarily about music journalism though, which is it's own special hell

xpost:
getting a notification from YouTube that a new comment has been posted on that video never fails to make my day slightly better

Allegedly there's a couple of Dylan fans in Austin who are still pissed off over some of my thoughts as well. C'est la vie.

i'm also not talking primarily about music journalism though, which is it's own special hell

I'm now perversely comforted by all the PR announcements I receive daily. The interchangeability is almost lulling.

music pr is the most painful pr

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

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.