The Art of the Interview

Newsarama, one of the Internet's leading comics-related websites, posted an interview with me today. The piece is by Daniel Robert Epstein and I appreciate it very much. It also got me thinking.

I worked as a newspaper reporter a long time ago and have since interviewed more people and written more articles than I can recall. (That's literally true; I'll often find published work of mine just a few months old and have no memory of writing it. Maybe I should see a doctor.) There are a lot of ways to do an interview, each with their pros and cons, each yielding different effects and results.

The old-fashioned way is to sit down with a subject face-to-face with a notepad. One of the pros of this method is that you actually meet the person, ideally in their own environment, and the interview can be more of a conversation that meanders in interesting, insightful directions. One of my favorite examples was a retiring school teacher I interviewed for a newspaper feature. When I entered her living room I saw that she'd installed built-in custom-made racks filled floor-to-ceiling with magazines on a wide array of interests from around the world. That was my key into the lady's career and personality right there.

One of the cons of this method is that very few reporters write as fast as a subject speaks. You can miss a lot. When I do a face-to-face interview I prefer to use a tape recorder backed up by notetaking, but that has some drawbacks, too. First, you have to trust the technology. It doesn't happen often, but I have lost entire interviews to bad batteries. Second, you've got to transcribe the darned thing later, which takes a long time. Third, a tape recorder really makes some people nervous. Fourth, there seems to be an old-school journalism ethic against taping, like that's not what real reporters do. I never understood that, and maybe some of the more experienced journalists who read my blog (I know who you are!) can explain it or correct me if I've got the wrong impression.

An alternative to a face-to-face interview is a phone interview, usually the most practical option. You lose some personal connection and whatever first-hand observations you might make about a person and their environment, but you gain a lot of efficiency. It's also easier to tape a subject (with their permission) via phone without throwing them off their stride. For most purposes, a phone interview is just fine.

Today's Newsarama interview was done by phone. In fact, as best as I can recall, it's a pretty straight transcript of our conversation ... which illustrates one of the hazards of the oral interview: no one speaks in neat sentences and paragraphs. Everyone talks in fragments and run-ons with dicey grammar and misfired vocabulary. Thoughts wander. When you see someone quoted in the newspaper, unless they were reading from a prepared speech, that's the cleaned-up version with all the "uhs" and "y'knows" snipped. You're not trying to make someone sound better, just comprehensible.

More and more interviews are done via e-mail and are often published in a Question and Answer format. After the writer thinks up their questions, their job is pretty much done and the answers are almost irrelevant. Although these writers often ask if I'm available for follow-up questions and I always am, in practice no one has ever followed up.

The con of this method is that there's almost no give and take. Everything depends on the quality of the initial questions. The interview never goes in unexpected directions. There's nothing for a writer to observe themselves, as even a phone interview can sometimes tell you something about a subject they didn't intend to convey. I think that's a pity. However, e-mail interviews have several pros. They're very time-flexible. If the writer knows the information they're looking for, it's a direct way to get answers. Subjects can think about their reply and say exactly what they want how they want. Like many people, I write better and smarter than I speak. And there's almost no danger of being misquoted or taken out of context.

As a writer, I don't think anything beats meeting a subject face-to-face on their home turf, preferably with a notepad and tape recorder. I figure my job isn't just to write down what people want to tell me, but to observe things they don't realize they're revealing and maybe coax them into saying things they weren't planning to say.

As a practical matter, the phone interview is my favorite "go-to" tool. Frankly, unless you're doing a real in-depth feature, the phone is a great way to get the facts and quotes you need while still having some personal interaction that allows for spontaneity.

But as a subject, I must admit I really enjoy the e-mail interview, which gives me total control over its content and lets me sound as smart as possible. Pros and cons, different methods and results.