How to Do a Successful Sports Interview

Series Summary

Reporting the news is not an easy thing to do—not by any stretch of the imagination. A journalist’s calling is to dig beyond the surface, to assemble and synthesize details to form a cohesive whole, a picture of something not readily apparent. Thus reporters serve as heralds of the daily goings on, keeping each of us apprised of the important things happening locally, regionally, nationally, and globally. And sports reporting is harder than it looks as well. You aren’t just watching a game or rooting for your team—no. You are also analyzing and comparing, digging for metaphors from life or remembering famous moments from yesteryear. You must turn a sporting event into something epic, dramatic, and narrative, even if no such drama exists in the local high school basketball arena.

In this free video series, expert sports broadcaster Jamal Spencer teaches you how to be a super spots reporter. You will learn how to do camera work, how to give interviews, make highlights, use computer graphics, and lead a reporting team of one. Jamal also gives you tips on how to dress, how to get the job, how to be an intern, and how to write good sports journalism. It is all here, folks, even how to cover local, college, and pro teams.

Video Transcript

"I'm Jamal Spencer for Expert Village here at ABC 53 here in Lansing, and we're going to talk about how to be a successful sports broadcaster. In this clip, we're going to be talking about how to do sports interview. The most critical part of a sports interview is listening. You can approach a subject, an athlete, a player and having ideas to what you want to ask them in a specific order and hoping that they can follow your pattern. We've found out that sometimes athletes don't go according to your plan. If you want to ask an athlete one question and he answers your second question, you need to be listening to that and make sure you don't ask the same question more than once. Professional athletes, college athletes, even high school athletes get a little bit upset when you ask them questions that they just answered or even answered before you got there, so you have to make sure you say hey excuse me, I'm sorry, I was over there. Have you answered this? If not, could you let me know blah, blah, blah. Even if you have a list of 6, 7, 8, 9 questions that you want to ask an athlete, you have to pay attention to what they say so that you know whatever they answer, you're listening. They know you're listening to them. That way if you ask a question, they give an answer, you say that's interesting let's talk about that instead of the question that I have. That way they feel more connected to you and it's less than interview and more of a conversation. Athletes really appreciate when you ask them questions based off of their answers and not just use flying down your piece of paper. Remember when you do a sports interview; it's kind of important that you listen to the athlete. If possible, you feed off of his answers. If not, you still are prepared with your list of questions to do a sports interview."