Conducting an Interview

Interviews are an excellent way of generating articles. People are interested in people and their stories. The tabloids pay very well for dramatic stories!

If you are conducting an interview, then these are a few pointers to consider:

1) Do some background research - it will help you to frame your questions, and not ask anything too obvious

2) Create questions to ask - make them open (ie they can't be answered with yes or no) You may not ask all the questions you devise, but they will help you get the interview started.

3) Make sure you put the interviewee at their ease - choose a pleasant environment, where you won't be interupted. Be open, honest, and interested.

4) Watch some of the really good interviewers on TV, and pay attention to their body language, questions, and how they draw information out of the person they're interviewing.

5) If your interviewee is happy to be recorded, then recording the interview is helpful for fact checking

6) Take notes as they talk, and double check any information later

7) Take pictures if you can (but make sure you get a signed consent form, allowing you to use the pictures to accompany your article!)

8) Whether or not to show them a draft of the piece is up to you. In my experience, interviewees are not editors, and tend to want to change the wrong parts of the piece. however, it can be useful for fact checking, and some interviewees won't consent to the interview without being able to see the article prior to publication.

Finally, write the piece, using what you learned in the interview, and flesh it out with your research.