Interviewing electronically
15-Apr-07
Journalists all have their own preferences and methods when it comes to interviewing people. Anyone who has read any of my WriteTheWeb stories will have noticed that I’m a regular user of email as a means of interviewing people, but I’m aware that this has its drawbacks, and that there are many journos who don’t approve.
Cory Doctorow has just posted some comments about email interviews, and why he doesn’t like doing them, and I can understand all of his objections. I wouldn’t agree, though, that there’s no room for interaction between interviewer and interviewee, but it’s true that finding that interaction is harder by email.
That’s partly why I did my last interview by QuickTopic. OK, so I was interviewing the guy who built QuickTopic, which gave me the idea, but having done it, I think I’ll be using that method again.
It’s better than email because it’s far closer to being a conversation. But, as you can interact with any QuickTopic page via email, it retains the convenience of email as a medium for communication.
Cory advocates face-to-face interviews and of course, that’s by far the best way to do it. But I still think electronic interviews, conducted by mail or by QuickTopic, are a decent alternative, especially when the interviewer and interviewee are on different continents, and even more so when the interviewer is an unpaid volunteer juggling his writing with caring for a baby.
Defensive? Moi?