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
This is a solid list, Susan. Pretty much covers it, specific questions aside, of course.
Yes – a good list! I’ve found the “is there anything I didn’t bring up” question is helpful since it often encourages people to sum up their main points. I’ve used it in both feature and harder-news style articles and often use quotes from that last question.
Something I find helpful (and often forget to do) that also applies to nearly every type of article writing is asking, “Can you give me a specific example of ____?” as a followup question.
You can nail every detail imaginable, but without “examples” and “concrete results”-type questions, you may wind up with some very ordinary results–and possibly, not a single interesting soundbite in the bunch. It’s easy to forget, but it makes a big difference to push hard here.
For example, when someone says, “My business really improved,” always ask, “Really? Can you give me an example of how it improved, or specific numbers?” Or if they say, “It was wonderful,” ask, “Can you describe what happened that was wonderful, or a particularly wonderful moment?”
It feels slightly annoying to do, which is perhaps why we shy away from those questions. But after listening to some very talented reporters and marketing writers perform interviews, I realized I HAD to have this on my list. EVERY time!
Lindsey: Totally agree! I’ve been trying to get more of these details as that’s something I often find missing when I start writing the piece. Earlier this summer, I started writing financial case studies and those really need specifics (specific examples are helpful for financial service pieces, too, but service pieces are more hypothetical whereas these pieces are intended to really paint a picture).
Because my family always discussed money in vague rather than specific terms, rarely using actual numbers, I found it incredibly tough to ask questions like “what was his net worth?” or “when you say a lot of credit card debt, can you give me a ballpark of how much?” But my editor kept asking for these details (rightfully so) and he let me listen on in another interview to see how one of my colleagues gets those details. Turns out there’s no magic formula for doing so. He just asks the questions and the source either answers or doesn’t. Watching Suze Orman also helped, because she never backs down from talking numbers and people generally answer her questions.
Agreed, Susan. Plus, when you do ask followups like that, sometimes the result surprises you and you get someone to open up vs. back down.
It works really well in the opposite scenario too – when there are no #s or specifics, but you need SOMETHING to write around. A memory, an event, a scenario. A source’s impressions and feelings. Again, this can be the trigger (with a good subject anyway) to take the interview from awkward to conversational, and that’s when the good stuff comes out!
“Love is composed of a single soul inhabiting two bodies.” ~ Aristotle
Thanks for the great tips! I’m curious; do you ever send a draft to a source before you submit to your editor? i often so this to ensure I’ve nailed every detail. Your thoughts?
Diane: It depends on the publication. This gets into a gray area because you want the article to be accurate but you don’t want to give sources complete editorial control. Some of my editors have a strict “no advance review” policy for this reason, in which case I might send them quotes for them to review out of context if they requested that or I might go confirm details with them over the phone (for instance, “I have in my notes that you started at the company in 2003 – is that correct?”). Other publications (generally those more oriented towards custom publishing) do want me to have sources review the draft in advance.