Teaching interviewing: a fundamental skill

From Brian Wilson, of Michigan, on the JEA listserv on Jan. 3:
I use a press-conference format as a way to teach caption writing, too. I ask my photo editor to find a variety of strong action photos and then I invite the subjects of those photos to class. I have the staffers fire off questions, press-conference style, based on what's happening in the photo. They eventually have to write a four-part caption (kicker, photo explanation, background, quote) for each of the photos. We share them in class.

This started because I realized that, in general, my staffers weren't asking very good questions of their interview subjects on their own. When they hear others ask them, they start to figure out the approach. I'm always amazed at the depth of information that comes up when we do this.

Anyway, if you're looking for a good place to start press-conferencing, maybe just look for some good photos.

And that got me thinking, so I replied with this:
I love Brian's approach, combining interviewing skills with finding news pegs and incorporating personality-revealing quotes. And it occurs to me that the photo doesn't have to be all that amazing for this to work.

I am thinking of Jim Richardson (a brilliant keynoter during the recent Kansas City convention) and his now out-of-print book "High School USA," published in 1979. Many of the amazing captions that accompanied the insightful (but often mundane) photographs he took of a small Kansas high school over a year are simply the transcribed and edited comments of people pictured. I treasure my copy of the book, and recommend searching for it online. I found 13 copies from various sellers at http://tinyurl.com/bfkx2ol

And that reminds me of a feature that used to run in the New York Times Magazine, called "What Were They Thinking?" (I regret that I no longer have samples of this feature -- perhaps Bob Greenman can point us to the correct archives...) The concept was simple: run a seemingly run-of-the-mill news photograph, and simply interview someone in the photo who could provide context and related information about that news. It was analagous to visting your grandparents' home and hearing extensive anecdotes about a posed photo circa 1912. Suddenly the photo pulsed with life, and real people emerged from the grim, stiff faces.

I have no problems with the 3-4 sentence extended caption, but wonder if readers might be very well-served by simply adding a knowledgable "voice" -- lightly filtered -- to our photographs.

So, Brian, thanks for reminding us that great caption writing is almost always the result of great interviewing.

Happy New Year!

Everyone's embarrassed... so what can student editors learn from this?

The fiasco over the firing of Shirley Sherrod at the U.S. Department of Agriculture could become part of our units on press law and ethics. It's a classic example of information taken out of context, compounded by a failure to take the time to investigate and discover what happened prior to two minutes of video and after. With a new school year about to begin, the inevitable rumors, half truths and outright fabrications of an excited student body (not to mention the teachers!) will begin again.

Whether our students are working on newspaper or online, we need to remind them of the need to thoroughly investigate "the news" before rushing to post or publish. We may or may not want to get into what the whole mess has to do with race in America, but everyone can agree that we need to get into how the media can distort the truth.

We need to remind our students that, as Carl Bernstein once defined it: "Journalism is the best attainable version of the truth." Sadly, the professional media, the White House, the blogsphere... pretty much everyone did not provide readers with the best attainable version of the truth in the case of Shirley Sherrod.

We can do better.

Interviewing approaches

There has been a long-running friendly debate on how to best conduct an interview. One view is that an interview should produce information that readers want, and that a reporter should control the scope and sequence of questions.

The main alternative view is that an interview is a conversation, and that preparing too many questions in advance tends to short circuit the conversation. Would you script a conversation with your best friend?

Perhaps the best choice is to combine the best of both approaches. We would be remiss to send a rookie reporter out to an interview with no preparation. Those prepared questions can give the reporter an anchor, particularly early in the interview.

But we need to assure reporters that the best stories often come as a surprise to the interviewer. When a source makes a surprising statement, or relates a compelling anecdote, or simply exhibits an unexpected sense of humor, a reporter needs to feel free to deviate from the script, and head into new territory.

A tool that can help a reporter who is willing to leave the script behind is a simple question: "Why do you say that?"

"Why do you say that?" or "Can you tell me more?" or "Can you give me an example?" are ways to invite the source to share anecdotes, to provide evidence, to open up.

A reporter who returns from an interview with a notebook of predictable quotes and facts is likely to produce equally predictable writing. A reporter who comes back from an interview feeling somewhat surprised will produce more energetic writing and more energized readers.

It all starts with reporters who are prepared to be surprised.