Week 4

Lectures and Readings:

This week the techniques of interviewing were explored. Journalists are known for their quick wit and cunning questions, so it is important to know how to interview in a way that will get you the answers you seek, rather than just getting prepared answers and spin.

A key aspect of interviewing is to ensure that you know the background of the story and more importantly the interviewee. It is important to first warm up into hard hitting questions. Making the interviewee comfortable will ensure that a journalist can make the interview casual and possibly develop a good rapport with a future potential source (Alysen 2012, p. 199).

Questions also need to be asked in a specific way. Double barrelled questions and closed questions can make the talent confused and cause them to give short answers. By asking open questions that are too the point, a journalist can ensure they get a clear and clean grab or sound bite. There are a number of techniques to ask these questions; starting with who, what, when, where, why and how, is the best way to angle questions in an interview.

It is also highly important to remain silent and listen after answering a question. Not only does this give the interviewee time to respond and develop their answer in a constructed response, but it also allows the journalist to gather questions to their responses that make create another angle to the story. Holding a silence is also another good technique, because it allows the interviewee to spill information. If a journalist remains silent the interviewee will usually start to talk and try to fill in the quiet with answers. This is a good technique that journalists use to catch out their talent (Alysen 2012, p. 195).

Finally, perhaps one of the most critical things to remember is to also prepare the equipment. Make sure there is an SD card in the camera and that there are spare batteries and the microphone is working, so complete a sound check first and then set record.