In discussion with Mika Hannula, a Social Practice visitor, we mentioned that many of us were conducting interviews.
The following suggestions were posed:
1. Create 3 minutes of silence somewhere within the interview. A great deal can be unveiled with this.
2. Ask the same question several times, phrased differently. Oftentimes, someone thinks the answer is complete. To delve below the surface, re-ask the same question differently, and you will be surprised by what you get.
Here is the interview release form I used for my faculty interview.
My peer interview was distributed, by said peer, here. I warn, it is not for the faint of heart.
Saturday, February 28, 2009
Wednesday, February 18, 2009
unethical editing?
This super-interesting article, discusses the ethical issues of editing, in the interviews of Deborah Solomon of the New York Times.
Wednesday, February 4, 2009
Interview Release Agreement
I ______________________________ grant ______________________ permission to use this material for publication/scholarship/educational or artistic purposes.
I_____________________________ agree to submit the transcription of this interview to ¬¬¬¬¬_________ ____________________ for review and to make factual corrections.
Date of Agreement _______________
Signed __________________________________________________, interviewer
Signed__________________________________________________ , interviewee
Contact Information¬¬__________________
Stipulations:
TIPS
Based on a presentation by Neal Conan, host of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" at the National Conference on Public Radio Talk Shows held April, 2002 at The Poynter Institute.
DIFFERENT WAYS TO ASK QUESTIONS
Keep your questions short. Do not lard your questions ahead of time with facts. Most of us learned to do interviews when we were reporters and our questions rarely, if ever, made it on the air: "Mr. Mayor, considering the fact that councilman blah blah blah says blah blah blah and the other councilman says blah blah blah and you lost the vote blah blah blah…." Those kinds of questions never made it on the air. If you go back to your tape cuts you'll figure out that the questions that did make it on the air are questions like, "No!" "Go on!" "You're kidding!" These are not exactly models of articulate Socratic dialogue, but they keep the conversation moving. And that is the critical point of what we're trying to do in interviews, so keep those questions short.
Ask only one question at a time. I do this all the time and it drives me crazy; I say, "Why did you do it, and what do you think is going to happen next?" That gives the guest the option of answering neither or either. If they're any good at all at avoiding questions, by the time they've finished their answer, you've forgotten the other question.
Do you have prewritten questions? Absolutely you have prewritten questions. The more questions you have written down however, the less you generally use them. It's a little like underlining. The more questions I have for the interview, the fewer I use. The ones I do tend to use are questions one and two, as I'm trying to get everything stabilized in front of me in the chaos that is call-in radio. There is a psychological comfort, of course, seeing a long list of questions there, in case you go empty.
Quotes are very handy things to pull out during an interview. "You said something interesting on that subject in your book, and here it is."
Have an example tucked in your back pocket so you can say, "Well what about that program over on the West Side?" The fact of the matter is, most professional interviewers know the answer to the question before they ask it. You should. So if you're asking for examples, you should probably know one.
Another good question when people start talking in the abstract, is "Give me a for instance." Concrete examples. These help the listeners establish what was an abstract idea as concrete.
You've got to be able to ask those difficult and awkward questions. For example, if any of us have Stephen Ambrose on a show right now, you can't ask him anything about his new book until he talks about plagiarism. You simply can't. That's the expectation of yourself, your audience, everybody else. It's his expectation too. He knows he's not going to get away with not talking about it. That has to be a subject. It has to be broached, and you just have to be open and honest about it.
SHAPING A NARRATIVE STRUCTURE FOR INTERVIEWS AND YOUR SHOW
Think as much as you can about the interview that you're going to do. This sounds elementary, but as you're coming to work, as you're driving, as you're eating breakfast and drinking coffee in the morning, think about how you want to write the intro, about the structure of the interview, and how you're going to get to that. The fact of the matter is that's extremely helpful.
Try to anticipate how to navigate from one idea to the next. This is often difficult. We tend to write down 15 questions and they aren't necessarily in a narrative order. The thing we have to remember about our programs and the thing we have to remember about our interviews is that they are narratives. We are trying to tell stories. They have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There should be a structure there. Thought A leads to thought B leads to thought C. Now there are reasons why you don't do these things in chronological order sometimes, but my rule of thumb for structuring any kind of a story has always been that you can depart from chronological order, but have a reason.
Chronological order is the most fundamental human storytelling form. The fundamental question of the story is, "And then?" It's our job to keep that tension going, so people will want to find out what happened next.
Cause and effect is another obvious way to structure, and it's another function of chronology. I can't over-emphasize this idea, and it's such an easy concept for the listener to grasp; this happened, then that happened.
Based on a presentation by Neal Conan, host of NPR's "Talk of the Nation" at the National Conference on Public Radio Talk Shows held April, 2002 at The Poynter Institute.
DIFFERENT WAYS TO ASK QUESTIONS
Keep your questions short. Do not lard your questions ahead of time with facts. Most of us learned to do interviews when we were reporters and our questions rarely, if ever, made it on the air: "Mr. Mayor, considering the fact that councilman blah blah blah says blah blah blah and the other councilman says blah blah blah and you lost the vote blah blah blah…." Those kinds of questions never made it on the air. If you go back to your tape cuts you'll figure out that the questions that did make it on the air are questions like, "No!" "Go on!" "You're kidding!" These are not exactly models of articulate Socratic dialogue, but they keep the conversation moving. And that is the critical point of what we're trying to do in interviews, so keep those questions short.
Ask only one question at a time. I do this all the time and it drives me crazy; I say, "Why did you do it, and what do you think is going to happen next?" That gives the guest the option of answering neither or either. If they're any good at all at avoiding questions, by the time they've finished their answer, you've forgotten the other question.
Do you have prewritten questions? Absolutely you have prewritten questions. The more questions you have written down however, the less you generally use them. It's a little like underlining. The more questions I have for the interview, the fewer I use. The ones I do tend to use are questions one and two, as I'm trying to get everything stabilized in front of me in the chaos that is call-in radio. There is a psychological comfort, of course, seeing a long list of questions there, in case you go empty.
Quotes are very handy things to pull out during an interview. "You said something interesting on that subject in your book, and here it is."
Have an example tucked in your back pocket so you can say, "Well what about that program over on the West Side?" The fact of the matter is, most professional interviewers know the answer to the question before they ask it. You should. So if you're asking for examples, you should probably know one.
Another good question when people start talking in the abstract, is "Give me a for instance." Concrete examples. These help the listeners establish what was an abstract idea as concrete.
You've got to be able to ask those difficult and awkward questions. For example, if any of us have Stephen Ambrose on a show right now, you can't ask him anything about his new book until he talks about plagiarism. You simply can't. That's the expectation of yourself, your audience, everybody else. It's his expectation too. He knows he's not going to get away with not talking about it. That has to be a subject. It has to be broached, and you just have to be open and honest about it.
SHAPING A NARRATIVE STRUCTURE FOR INTERVIEWS AND YOUR SHOW
Think as much as you can about the interview that you're going to do. This sounds elementary, but as you're coming to work, as you're driving, as you're eating breakfast and drinking coffee in the morning, think about how you want to write the intro, about the structure of the interview, and how you're going to get to that. The fact of the matter is that's extremely helpful.
Try to anticipate how to navigate from one idea to the next. This is often difficult. We tend to write down 15 questions and they aren't necessarily in a narrative order. The thing we have to remember about our programs and the thing we have to remember about our interviews is that they are narratives. We are trying to tell stories. They have to have a beginning, a middle, and an end. There should be a structure there. Thought A leads to thought B leads to thought C. Now there are reasons why you don't do these things in chronological order sometimes, but my rule of thumb for structuring any kind of a story has always been that you can depart from chronological order, but have a reason.
Chronological order is the most fundamental human storytelling form. The fundamental question of the story is, "And then?" It's our job to keep that tension going, so people will want to find out what happened next.
Cause and effect is another obvious way to structure, and it's another function of chronology. I can't over-emphasize this idea, and it's such an easy concept for the listener to grasp; this happened, then that happened.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)