Scripting News - Latest Comments in New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

jim forbes — Wed, 11 Feb 2009 07:55:57 -0000

There are good and really bad source material interviews/interviewees.
Real reporters get out of their offfices, log out of their computers and do real factual research. Silicon Valley reporters make phone calls from their home offices and base too much of their reporting on second- or third party reporting.
Among interview subjects in the confines of Silicon Valley ,i've always found the concept of interviewees as "rising stars" to be oddly humorous. Looking at their histories, most aren't really stars, their comets-- microscopic space dust that quickly shines, ignites and exhaust its combustible capital.
Mi dos coentavos, bubbi.

Best,
Jim Forbes
back home in Southern California amidst the sturdy roots of productive, but aging avocado trees.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Scobleizer — Sun, 01 Feb 2009 17:59:59 -0000

This is why I like live video interviews that do not get edited later. That way the audience gets to hear you without being messed with.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

calvin — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 19:27:16 -0000

I've thought long and hard about this subject, because it's so obvious and so pervasive. Blogs, of course, are a great antidote. But the upshot is, reporters are tasked with telling a story. Because it's a story it MUST follow some narrative structure and conventions.

typically the story must have characters, must elucidate some conflict, and should resolve the conflict. that is, it follows a plot. Often, plots are created after all the interviews are done. That's when the reporter "figures out the story". Which is a bit different than figuring out the angle.

You can watch this story creating process happen live when there is some big "breaking story". The reporters ask some factual based questions, but then very quickly you hear them asking narrative based questions. And they ask these questions to construct a story to give to their viewers.

There is one colossal problem with this story telling obsession of news reporting. %99.99 of all the things reporters report on are not stories. Reality is not made of stories. There are events certainly. there are sequences of events. There are conversations and decisions. but none of those things is a story. Stories are MADE UP by reporters after (or before) the facts to "explain" the facts.

It's completely make believe.

Sometimes story telling is very useful. It can be useful to develop a narrative when in the pursuit of some goal. Or to follow a narrative when confronted by some difficulty. But even in those cases, the narrative is made up. Stories and narratives are not "embedded in reality". They are tools we use to make sense of reality.

We all make up narratives about people and events all the time. It's a deeply human activity, that with reporting is sometimes taken to extremes. And such mercenary story telling creates 3 basic problems.

Firstly, because reporters make up stories (albeit about real things), they often do not do any follow up. Why? Because the story is over. The media creates lots of stories that end, narratively. but if you think about them weeks or months later, naturally, people are curious what happened afterwords. this sort of reporting is neglected because the stories are not new. eg. "We already covered that story."

Secondly, the media competes for stories. It's how they talk about reporting. "Who is going to cover those stories". "Who gets the story first?" "Who gets the story right?" This is why Fox news does so well. They tell compelling stories. compelling stories have conflicts. Fox's talking heads use their interviewees to tell a story and do so with conflict Whether the story is factually true, or even relevant is not as important as telling a good story.

Thirdly, interviewees are characters in the reporters story. period. Like all stories, the more prominent the character, the more the story revolves around that character. But it's the reporters story, not the characters story.

Certainly there are exceptions to these problems. But the overall thrust of reporting is story driven.

You can see this in magazines and non personal blogs too. the information that gets written about follows a narrative. Trade magazines tell a narrative just like all other kinds of reporting. eg. the reporting that is done about Apple is always dripping with the trappings of storytelling, the conflict with microsoft, "the cult of apple", success and failure and success. Magazines and non personal blogs tell stories that fit their "interests". even if there might be a completely different story of interest to their readers, if it doesn't follow the narratives that publication pursues, it is ignored, ridiculed etc.

And as for interviews, the real question is, do you want to be stuck in some other person's narrative?

thanks for saying no Dave

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Ari Herzog — Fri, 30 Jan 2009 02:13:17 -0000

I'm not a reporter, Dave, but in the spirit of this post and in the spirit of my running series on best practices in social media at http://ariwriter.com/catego... would you be willing to be interviewed there? May I email you? Thanks.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Gregg — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 23:41:50 -0000

Is this interview that you're upset about posted/printed yet? What's the the publication?

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

martin_english — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 22:46:49 -0000

Don't forget, another issue is that the reporter thinks his readers want a "story". Whether they're right or wrong, I don't know, but everything I've seen and heard suggests that Editors / Journalists (prin, TV, Radio) believe bad news sells better than good news.

Perhaps because its more "engaing" for the audience ? For example, based on what I've read on these pages, I'm more likely to look at a story titled "Dave Winer: Arsehole", if only to see what the writers assumptions are based on.

OTH, I'd ignore a piece titled "Dave Winer: Knows what He's Talking About" because it is not "news" to me.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Chuck Shotton — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 21:07:55 -0000

[slightly off-topic post retracted by distracted author.]

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

bigyaz — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 20:22:59 -0000

Generalize much? There are good and bad reporters just like there are good and bad pundits/bloggers/blowhards. It's not hard to determine which is which. Why not just be selective?

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

dave — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 19:29:15 -0000

Okay -- how do you determine which is which? I'd love to know. I've been
talking to reporters for 30 years, and I can't tell.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

nborwankar — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:55:30 -0000

How about a blog-terview. Reporter posts questions on *your* blog and their own blog. You get to answer question on your blog in writing. You're done! No chance of malicious editing by them. Plus people get to comment on the interview on your blog.
The interviewer might demand that they also have a copy on their blog which is fine as long as the definitive copy is understood to be on yours.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

nborwankar — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:51:34 -0000

Ahh, very good - I would suggest going further and challenging journalists to only conduct mutual interviews -both parties get to publish their side of the dual-interview. That would be like MAD (Mutually Assured Destruction) for interviews ;-)

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

justcorbly — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:38:29 -0000

As Dave alludes below, most reporters are not interested in gaining and sharing an interviewee's knowledge. They are interested in making a story and getting it aired or published. No reason why a story cannot be accurate and informative, but all too often a reporter enters an interview with, at best, a preconceived notion of what the subject is going to say, or, at worst, the intent to manipulate the questions and responses to provide copy for the story he's already written in his head.

Having both interviewed and been interviewed, I know that reporters who play that game often fail to notice even better stories taking shape before their eye and ears.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

David Pappas — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:35:46 -0000

I know exactly what you mean. I wrote an e-mail as a follow up to an interview recently. The main point of my written words was dropped and the 'bits and pieces' which supported the reporters thesis were used instead. Trying to influence a reporter to see the 'big picture' is an exercise in futility. I like the idea of putting the idea out there in a blog post and letting the whole world see your words unedited.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

sameasiteverwas — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:17:43 -0000

I have a positive suggestion for reporters: Interview each other the way you interview your subjects. Your eyes will open.

Christ, no. The last thing we need from journalists is more navel-gazing about journalism. They already indulge in way too much of that already.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Drew Kime — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:14:32 -0000

Interviewing each other wouldn't teach them anything. Most of the time the problem is that they don't know anything about the domain of the interview subject. That's (supposedly) why they're interviewing them: to gain and share their knowledge. Reporters already know each other's domain of expertise. If they did this exercise they'd come away convinced that they're doing things right.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Gary Mintchell — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 17:00:25 -0000

I'm an editor now, but did other things before. Been burned big time by "journalist" who put stuff on front page of local newspaper. Now I interview people who want to review because even trade journal editors mess things up or take things out of context. Too many people with an agenda who aren't upfront with it and try to hide it behind quotes that aren't. Probably a personality disorder brought on by the quest to make themselves known. I'm with you. (oh, yes, I'm still on userland)

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

KevinCTofel — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:43:53 -0000

I still like the idea of an interview wiki. Both sides get to massage their words to ensure nothing is taken out of context.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

dave — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:30:47 -0000

Okay. BTW, an aside -- I can't believe this post has been up a couple of
hours and no one has told me I'm unimportant or stupid or corrupt. What's
wrong -- where are all the assholes! :-)

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

dave — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:21:37 -0000

I suppose. But consider that reporters are always looking for a gotcha. So
the interview would have to include examples of when they changed their
posiiton on something, or somehow challenge their ethics. If they didn't do
that I'd have to say they weren't taking the exercise seriously.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

dave — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:19:44 -0000

How about this one: a mild-mannered reporter chooses an expletive-filled
quote from someone who hates you and quotes them talking about you. I get
it. The reporter wishes he could say that -- but instead is using someone
else to throw the punch. This is part of what I got a glimpse at last week.
What a coward. Should have the courage to put it in his own words instead of
using a foil.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Bill Rice — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 16:06:18 -0000

I agree, that is best approach.

I have tried it with success occasionally (even had a few do it on their own). But, when you are a little guy in the vast, noisy, tech ocean sometimes it is tough to stick to your guns when exposure feels so critical.

I will say this--my business would not have been nearly what it is today without blogs and RSS. Thank you! Good stuff.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

AndrewBurton — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:54:03 -0000

Nevermind, I didn't read down far enough. My apologies.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

dave — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:34:49 -0000

I don't do email interviews either. To me writing is work, and same with the reporter. Why should I write so much when they're only going to use one phrase or sentence and quote it out of context, in a stream with all the other quotes -- to tell the story they want to tell. They're always talking about how people have to be paid to write, well why should I work for them for nothing when they're getting paid?

What I do offer, which more reporters have been willing to do these days, is to show them a blog post I've written on the subject, or even sometimes to write a new one. That way my whole idea gets out there, and if they want to quote me out of context, at least the full context is out there. It's also hard to misquote when you're doing it via copy/past -- so I get misquoted less often.

If they're really doing their job they also link back to the post they're quoting, and now we're beginning to enter win-win territory, the readers get the whole story, they get their abbreviated story, and I get the full idea out there.

Re: New policy on interviews (Scripting News)

Bill Rice — Thu, 29 Jan 2009 15:23:09 -0000

Or interview on blogtalkradio.com (or like source) and publish journalist feature with interview MP3. Wonder if any journalist has the guts to do that? I think this is kinda the idea behind Mark Cuban's email interviews only policy.