How to Conduct an Interview With a Source

Series Summary

Good writing is an important skill that can be used in a variety of media. Whether it's writing a meeting agenda, a toast or a magazine article, the ability to effectively communicate to a large audience stems from knowledge and execution of proper writing techniques. With such knowledge comes an understanding of the distinct differences in writing styles between creative writing, journalism, technical writing and informal writing. In this free video series on journalism, an award-winning journalist offers advice regarding journalism jobs. Learn about getting into the journalism scene, and find out how to get a first job as a journalist. Discover the world of radio journalism, and even get tips on conducting an interview. Journalists inform the world of current affairs through a variety of media, such as newspapers, magazines and radio.

Video Transcript

"I'm Bruce Edwards, again the business reporter for the Rutland Herald. If you're a news reporter, if you're a journalist, you're going to do interviews. You're either going to do interviews in person or you're going do interviews over the phone. So being good at doing interviews, conducting interviews is important. I guess the first thing, depending on the type of job you have or the type of reporting job, is doing some background information, do some research on the person you're going to interview. It could be a hard news story, you could be covering city hall, you could be interviewing the mayor, if you have the city hall beat. You probably have a good background in what's going on at city hall. So, probably not a lot of background or research is needed. Now I do some other reporting besides business reporting just to keep things fresh and I recently did an interview with Tim Weiner of the New York Times who wrote a best selling book on the history of the CIA, called Legacy of Ashes. He was appearing at one of the local book stores. So I didn't read the entire book but I read you know, enough to get a feel for the book and I read some background information of the reviews on the book and about his career. So when I did the telephone interview, prior to his appearance at the book store, the local book store, you know, I had a handle, I knew something about the history of the CIA beforehand, and his book certainly, it's a great book if you're interested in that kind of genre and the aspect of history. So, I guess not being too wordy, the best thing to do is to do a lot of research on a subject, especially if you're not familiar with that subject. And, you know, from that you'll generate your own questions. And from there it just flows and answers very often from subjects, from the person you're interviewing, will generate additional questions. I think one of the advantages you have in journalism, what makes it a great profession is that you get to interview all kinds of people. Even at a relatively small newspaper like the Rutland Herald, you know, I can't tell you the number of people, the very interesting people, not only locally but nationally and internationally, I've been able to interview over the years. I did a radio interview a long time ago on a talk show I hosted with Dave Thomas who is the founder of Wendys. He came to Rutland for a restaurant opening of all things. So it's an exhilarating business and it gives you a lot of satisfaction and it's hardly boring. It's not a boring profession. It's not the greatest paying profession but it certainly is far from boring and it's the thing that keeps me going after all these years."