How To: Conduct a Face to Face Interview

 

Your interviews are the most important part of you piece. It’s where you get all of your information as well as proving to your audience that you are creditable. I am also talking about the face to face way of interviewing, as over email is self explanatory.

When preparing for interviews you should bring a charged device that can record with, a writing utensil, a notebook, and your interview questions, which you should have printed off or have on a loose leaf sheet of paper.

First start by asking them if you can record. Then get their name, also ask them to spell it out so you make sure you spell it correctly on your article.

First if they source allows you ALWAYS RECORD INTERVIEWS. This helps you to quote them word for word, which is very critical more recently. This also allows you to have more of a conversation with the person rather than just a questionnaire and you justing writing down every word they say. This also gives you more of an opportunity to find nuggets of information to ask follow up questions with.

While I do suggest taking notes, I often find myself not taking notes and just focusing on the conversation because I know I have the recording.

Also look at any opportunity to ask follow up questions, as the source things may bring up things you didn’t even know about which may even led to your article taking a completely different direction.

At the end also ask if they have anything else to add, this question tends to led to good quotes.

After you finish your interview I suggest trying down quotes and information from the interview in a word document (word for word), this makes the rough draft a but easier to put together.

Most importantly make sure you quote the person correctly as misquoting someone could led to you loosing you creditability or getting in worse trouble.

What are your tips for conducting interviews?

Stay tuned, next I will be talking about putting together your rough draft!

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