How to interview and get the best from interviewees
Your internal communications forward story list is now finalised and it’s time to follow-up your leads to get the information you need to start writing your stories.
E-mail or telephone each contact and arrange a convenient time for a brief telephone interview, or if they are located nearby, a face-to-face interview. (If the interview is by ‘phone make sure you ring at the agreed time. If the interview is in person, aim for a place that is quiet and where you won’t be interrupted.)
Let them know the purpose of the story, your deadline, and a rough idea of what you’ll need from them. This gives your contact time to think and prepare for the discussion. Also let them know when and where the article is due to appear.
The advantages of the interview
Your contact may offer to write something themselves or e-mail you a relevant report. Try to resist this if you can and push for an interview.
The disadvantages of a submitted article or report are:
- They are usually much too long and will contain too much detailed information. This will make it difficult to decide on the key messages and key facts that you need to include. You will therefore be second-guessing the contact’s priorities and there is a fair chance that you will pick the wrong ones. The article will therefore have to be re-written, significantly increasing your workload (and theirs!).
- To write so that your readers can understand the story you obviously need to understand it yourself. If your contact’s report, memo or homespun article is full of acronyms or technical jargon it could be gobbledygook to you and you’ll have to speak to them again anyway to get clarification.
- Writing for a publication takes a certain skill and not everyone has it. There is a danger that the report or article that your contact pens will be badly written, ambiguous, and not easily understandable. Again, if you don’t understand it, you can’t write about it, so you’ll have to go back to them again to get the information that you really need.
The advantages of an interview are:
- Your interviewee will automatically focus on the priorities and key messages and summarise them for you.
- They are likely to explain complex terms in language that you, and therefore your readers, will easily understand.
- If there’s something that you don’t understand you can ask them there and then and get a clear explanation.
- In the course of the conversation your interviewee may touch on other subjects that are worth following-up as stories in their own right.
- A telephone interview only takes 10 or 15 minutes. It will take you a lot longer to read through and summarise a lengthy report. It will take them a lot longer to write the article themselves.
Reports and briefings on your contact’s particular subject can, of course, be very useful - but for background information once you have interviewed your contact and thoroughly understand the subject.
There will be occasions when you have to settle for a submitted article or report. We’ll go over some tips for re- writing these a bit later on.
Getting the best from an interviewee
Preparation:
- Check out any background information that is available so that you know a bit about the subject.
- Spend some time thinking about the story and the basic information that you’ll need to write it (key messages, remember the five ‘w’s and an h).
- Prepare a few questions in your notebook that will prompt the interviewee to give you this information. This will also give you a structure to work from.
The interview:
- Interviews can be nerve-wracking so put your interviewee at ease by chatting to them before you plunge straight into questioning. Enquire after their health, talk about the weather, the usual stuff – just as if you had met them by the coffee machine.
- Before you start, give them a re-cap on the point of the story and the information that you are hoping to get from them. Don’t go in with a closed mind, though, as they will be on top of their subject and may have an important update or a completely new angle on the story.
- If you know very little about the subject then don’t be afraid to tell them this at the beginning.
- Ask them to explain things to you in the simplest terms, avoiding industry or technical jargon. Point out that the article that you are writing will be read by a general readership from across all sectors and backgrounds.
- Start with your pre-prepared first question. (Try to phrase this and all questions in a way which discourages ‘yes’ or ‘no’ answers but gets them to talk.) Your questions should be open-ended and relevant to what your audience wants to know.
- For example, instead of ‘Do you agree with the regional management team’s decision to launch this accommodation standards strategy?’ try ‘What are the main benefits of the accommodation standards strategy launched by the regional management team?’.
A good interviewer listens carefully to the answers given and asks supplementary questions based on those answers. ( Although you should cover all your pre-prepared questions over the course of the discussion, go with the flow of the interview, don’t rigidly follow your question list. If your interviewee gives new and relevant information in the course of answering a particular question then follow it up. You can always return to your pre-prepared question list later.) - Don’t assume anything – even if you think you know the answer, ask the question anyway. All facts in the story should be based on the information gleaned from the interviewee, not your assumptions.
- Don’t interrupt. If their answer veers off into an irrelevant area, wait until your interviewee has finished before getting back on topic with a new question.
- If you don’t understand something, or miss something because you’re busy taking notes, don’t be afraid to ask the interviewee to go over it again. It’s essential that you understand everything so that you can get it right in the article.
- At the end of the interview ask the interviewee if they have anything else that they wish to include.
- It is essential to get the basics rights so check details such as the spelling of the interviewee’s name, places and technical terms. Also ask for their preferred job title and contact number (for inclusion in the article) and whether you can include an intranet address for readers to get further information.
- Tell them when you are likely to send the draft article for their approval and when the finished piece is likely to appear in the newsletter.
- Ask them if you can call them again if you find you have a gap in your notes or need further details. They’ll usually be happy to help.
Choosing your angle
This depends on the points you and your interviewee want to make. Where possible, always try to find a new angle – in other words, a way of telling the story differently, with fresh information. Tell the audience something they don’t already know.
Before you start to write, ask yourself the following questions:
What is the subject?
What points do I want to/need to make?
What’s new about this?
What is unusual or interesting?
» On to Editing copy
