JOURNALISM 392W - Q & A Thoughts

This was a very entertaining series of assignments for me, mostly because this is the kind of stuff I already love to do anyway, so I got to just have fun with my hobby and hand it in for course credit. Hard to argue with that. My absolute favorite type of interview has always been face to face. Unfortunately I didn’t get to do that for any of these assignments, but it was still a good experience.

One thing I liked about these Q & As was that they illustrate very well something we were told about in Journalism 300, but were never really given a good chance to experience. I’m referring to the idea that the face to face interview is the best way to conduct an interview, followed by video chat (like Skype), then by phone, then by back and forth email, and finally by a one shot email. In 300, most of our assignments came in the form of pre-constructed scenarios in which we were given data, facts, and quotes, and told to turn it into a story. Then towards the end we were given two big assignments: the feature and the court feature, and we were simply instructed to do them. Most people did face to face interviews. But never during the semester were we given sequential assignments like this which offer the opportunity to compare different styles and really get a feel for the difference.

Having said that, I think the most challenging style for me was the back and forth email. I can see how it has obvious benefits over the one shot email as it allows you to ask follow up questions, but it was made harder by the fact that I was working on deadline (as we so often are in journalism). See with the one shot email it was simple. I called up my friend, asked her if it would be alright if I sent her some questions to answer, she agreed, and sent them back the next day. I did that two days before the assignment was due. But in the back and forth email, I had to make sure my friend Scott would reply to me in time meaning I couldn’t wait to a day before deadline, because what if he didn’t respond fast enough. Furthermore with the ability to follow up, it becomes easier to get sidetracked, and often becomes a much longer interview than initially intended. Those two factors signify a much greater time commitment, and make for a more stressful situation overall.

As for editing, I was lucky enough not to have to do very much. Richard Neal is a fairly eloquent human being, and I felt that whatever grammatical errors he made did more to add a human element to the interview than detract from it.