The Interview
Good reporters are good listeners. A general rule: Simple question — fascinating quotation. Referring to guidelines of the Columbia University a newsman conducts two kinds of interviewing principles: (1) The news interview’s got the purpose to gather information in order to explain an idea, event, and/or situation of news. Means: The target is a master, specialist, or expert on the issue you ask him, her or it about. (2) The profile interview — focusing on an individual to be portrayed — means: It should be some mini-drama of everyday life. Blending description, action, and dialogue.
A few basic rules
An interview’s ground adjustments: (1) Adjust the outset to state purpose. (2) Adjust how much time it may take, instruct the material’s made to be used, and clarify how you intend to use it. (3) Adjust the interview as short as possible. Thus, ask specific questions the source is competent to answer. (4) Adjust that the target has got enough of time to reply. So, don’t hesitate to clarify complex or vague answers. (5) Adjust answers if requested.
Preparation and further dues
The American reporter Abbott Joseph Liebling (1904 to 1963) — since 1935 first of all connected to The New Yorker — was used to say: «The preparation is the same whether you are going to interview a diplomat, a jockey — or an ichthyologist. From the man’s past you learn what questions are likely to stimulate a response.»
Refering to, the five quests of interviewing: (1) the quest to prepare, (2) the quest to establish a relationship, (3) the quest to induce the target to talk, (4) the quest to listen and watch attentively, (5) the quest to hold the line of a guiding threat.
To unfold: (1) To prepare means persuading people to be interviewed, to research, to familiarize yourself to as much background as possible. Times it’s even to script a block of particular questions. (2) To establish a relationship means to start with a question that’s simply to be answered — reducing all of these things up in the air, considered within the scope of some particular issue, according to personality and/or occupation. (3) To induce the target to talk means to think audacious but unobtrusive and non-meddlesome. The auditor’s code: Be courteous, kind, quiet, trustworthy, courageous, patient, thorough, and persistent. To even be uncommunicative depends on the interviewer. Anyhow, it’s focused to the target, not to the reporter. (4) To listen and watch attentively means even to recognize and integrate the multitude of talk. Most important: rhetoric and bodylanguage. (5) To hold the line of a common theme means to guide a target to answers, to anchor while moderating a talk.
Effects of questions
Fred Zimmerman — a long-time reporter for The Wall Street Journal — gives a few suggestions on how to prepare: (1) Do research on the interview topic, and on the person to be interviewed, so you can ask the right questions to understand the right answers. On top you can demonstrate that you have taken time to understand the subject. Hard to be fooled, taking it for granted. (2) Devise a tentative theme for your story. A major purpose of the interview it is to obtain quotes, anecdotes, and further evidence supporting a theme. (3) List question topics in advance but keep preparation for interviews on sensitive subjects. Means: Theorize about what the person’s attitude is likely to be towards you, and towards the subject you are asking about. What is his, her, its role in the event? Whose side’s he, she, it on? What kinds of answers are expect to key questions, first of all the logical way.
Based on a theory like that it’s easy to develop a plan of attack. It makes you think, it might mesh to the person’s probable attitude, it gets you through, some might say his, her, or its probable defense. Basically there are five kinds of questions: (1) direct questions, (2) open questions, (3) intrusive questions, (4) closed-ended questions, and (5) questions summing it up.
To figure it out: (1) To ask direct questions it needs to prepare. Without knowledge it’s hard to nail one down. For example: photographer Bruce Weber in an interview to The Talks. He closes: «I always tell my assistants who are young photographers that they should have a strong life, have a viewpoint.» The reporter asks «What do you mean?» — assuming «What have I done?», «Tell me how to live this life worth living!» and «Who the fuck are you — your construction plan, please, very briefly, in a nutshell!» Weber’s answer: «Go out in the world and live!» A bouncing sack it is, a suggestion to travel around, to explore all of these quarks and quirks of the weird wild wired world. Might be it’s even a tagline characterizing the photographer’s self. The mood behind: all-in it is. From being pissed off, to sugardaddy’s tipps and tricks, up to a personality summed-up in the short line.
The (2) open question is made to make anyone wither to establish a relationship. To examplify: «Tell me ’bout your life!» (3) Intrusive questions again are made to make the target talk but to treat with caution not to be too meddlesome. Broken down: A good reporter doesn’t need such questions. Some might say: the guileful and underhand, bitchy kind of interviewing. The (4) closed-ended question does not require a specific answer. It’s more made to brief the target by the little help of a rhetorical question — made to anticipate a possible react. It can be answered shortly, often enough with just another gesture watched and marked attentively. A short «Exactly» suits, same as «This is it». For short, a nod of one’s approval it is. One of the most important kinds of a question is the (5) question summing up. At least in the end it should essentialize the starting idea, in-between it could sharpen the grasp of the common issue. Example Weber on The Talks: «Mr. Weber, what’s your favorite picture you have ever taken?» Giving the gist he answers: a picture of my parents. If you like to know anything about their personality think of actor and director Paul Newman (1925 to 2008), famous for the racer’s entrepreneurial genome. It doesn’t matter whether his father is really characterized this way. Interviews like that are more made to guard privacy — while linking one’s family up to the history of the sector one’s living in. The last question summing-up: «Is photography art to you?» Once again it’s asked to make the target justify, why the works are that expensive for example. Anyhow, first and foremost it’s made to close the loop of the guiding threat. Weber disagrees, ducks to swerve: «I never questioned if it was an art or not. I just questioned its importance to me.»
Get what you give
To summarize the attitude of a reporter towards his target: It’s a give and take. Don’t tell people what you know but ask questions based on research. The early stage of an interview is a period called the feeling-out. The target balances his, her, or its gains and losses from the «investigative» information the reporter seems to seek, the reporter tries to illustrate the potential of rewards and benefit. Means: the cost-benefit of disclosure, privacy, and publicity — on the one hand. On the other: the respect and feeling that goes with doing a good turn. Both parties of an interview have certain assumptions and expectations. Generally the reporter expects the target to tell the truth, to stand behind what he, she, or it talks all about. The target again presumes that the reporter will write the story fairly and accurately. Both agree, without saying so, that the questions and answers mean what they appear to. That is, that there are no meanings hidden. In a nutshell: The interview is ’bout earning (and spending) trust. The good listener again listens to good quotes revealing slips of the tongue, the dialect and diction of a source setting him, her, or it a part of. Apart, a common phrase of self-defense as push it is: «Readers want to hear, it’s about you — not me.»
Gestures and bodycasing
Unconscious reacts of a being’s bod offer sentiments one’s assumed to hide in both, mind as tide. Thus, mostly interviews are made a challenge of self-confidence, means: The proof of the pudding is in the eating, whatever it takes, no guts, no glory.
Bodycasing again targets the very fabrics, bodylanguage, gestures and mimics. In a nutshell it’s pantomine of bodily and/or facial movement. The (1) gestures of the eye mean an unsteady look to the ground, the classic par excellence, assumed to be chosen to reveal one’s insecurity. The common rule: Face the interviewers straight from the heart — eye to eye but not to stare. Anyhow it’s staring while thinking, measuring the latency of reacts. The reflective, thoughtful look upwards appeals to be solution-oriented, passionate, automotivated, self-starting. (2) To bite yourself upon your lips means a conceivable bad habit, one of the main pointers of the lips’ gestures. Generally it’s got no place in office. Your opponent could think you are nervous, neurotic to the bones. Better close them neutrally: no judgment, no statement — no comment. The impact: You seem to be honestly open, avoid rash convictions of damnations’ kind, and you think before talking.
(3) Frozen hands you even hide under the table dancing. Thus, these gestures illustrate a very clear sign of uncertainty. Better: Underline the wordings by natural gestures. Most important: Avoid to wear a pad, folder, portfolio, or briefcase in front of your belly. It’s a clear evidence of fragility. Wear it underneath your arms again, it looks like you were a real tackle and practitioner.
(4) Have you ever paid attention to what your shoulders do during a meeting? Betimes they develop a life of own existence. In uncertain situations: Avoid to let ’em fall down, and keep your head up. If not possible wear some jacket with blown-up pads. Or stand by it, these gesture of shoulder teints you dancing on air as well, hang-up to the reasons why — depicted by the crowd surrounding. (5) Last, not least, the gestures of feet. Who the hell fidgets around, especially during a meeting? Thus, the claim «Keep you feet» is no accident. Idiomly it’s «Do not back down» — seldom recognized it lacks any kind of self-confidence. Might be it looks like you’re just caught short to spend some penny, may be it’s making you the biggest cranky, a sick loser of.
To sum it up, the Five-C of bodycasing: (1) Cues mean the key part of conditioning, for example: An actor waits to hear the cue and rubs his face off. The statement: a very, very complicated issue. (2) Characters are chosen to be indicated: Rub-off your face to start a children’s tune. It’s like in Child’s Play, the television series in which kids explain the science of things. (3) Changes mean a very important thing to figure out points of transition. From an inviting, open formation to a reserved, closed one a person suddenly scratches their nose, indicating discomfort. (4) Clusters of bodyshifts are set to shape meaning: A person rubs their nose and smiles — to conceal and grant uncertainty as well. (5) Context means framing: To rub-off one’s face during dinner does not suit the situation.
In the end: To match cases like these, a contingent doubtful it is. Almost no gesture means the same to anyone.
