Ever hung up with a source and realized you’d forgotten to ask a key question? Hate it when that happens! I appreciate my source’s time and I know they’re busy, so I try to make interviews run as efficiently as possible.

As much as possible, I compile follow up questions and ask them all at once instead of annoying the $#%& out of them with lots of piecemeal questions. (Sometimes this is unavoidable if your story goes through several layers of editing.)

I also created this checklist to make sure I’m covering all my bases. Obviously, this varies depending on the publication and the nature of your article, but hopefully this will provide a good starting point.

• If you’re using an audio recorder, always test your recorder in advance and get your source’s permission to record.
• Confirm the spelling of the source’s name. If they use a nickname like Mike or Susie or Jim, ask if they’d prefer to be referenced by their formal name or the nickname and make note of this when filing the article.
• Collect information on age, occupation, and hometown for “real people” sources and job title, company, and any relevant books or professionals affiliations for expert sources.
• If your editor wants you to gather headshots or other photos from sources, it’s often a good idea to ask for photos while you have your source on the phone so you don’t have to track them down later.
• Never promise to include links or mention someone’s book. When someone tries to pressure me, I usually just say, “that’s up to my editor, I can’t promise anything.”
• Ask if there’s anything you didn’t bring up during the interview that would be relevant to the topic.
• Ask who else you should interview and whether there are other trends or issues happening in that industry or topic area. This could lead to future ideas.
• Explain the editorial process and encourage them to return calls from your editor or fact-checker (I’ve had sources ignore these calls thinking they’d already talked to me, so they were all set – publishers hate this!). Also mention that you might be in touch with follow up questions and find out if they prefer phone or email and if they’re planning to be out of touch in the next few weeks.
• Thank them and let them know that you’ll send a copy of the article when it appears. Often I don’t know when that will be, so I explain that a variety of factors are in play and I’ll keep them in the loop.

What do you think? Anything you’d add to this list?

Image courtesy of graur codrin / FreeDigitalPhotos.net