The Media Interview

The folks at Doogtoons may be on to somethng: conduct an interview, then do a cartoon version of it, adding short scenes that “comment” on what the person is saying.

They’ve started a couple of celebrity interviews on their site and here are some screenshots from an interview with Weird Al about his childhood.

Personally, I could see replacing the whole of “Entertainment Hollywood Showbiz Extra Access Tonight” with this format… Then again, it wouldn’t hurt to try some political interview shows this way, either.

One of the concerns people raise about email interviews is that you’re allowing the interviewee take their time to craft an answer, maybe even run it by some media handlers. It’s turned out to be a non-issue, I think, because interviews by email generally allows people more time to give thoughtful, useful answers instead of being under the gun of a live or even a phone interview. And the folks who give you PR pablum in an email probably would have had the same media handling for a live interview anyway.

The real issue, I think, is: who are you interviewing? (or from the other side, who’s doing the interviewing) An email address is not an identity, it’s the identity of a mailbox on a server (or an alias to a mailbox…). Even with a phone interview, there’s something to go on for the identity of your interview partner. Needless to say, all of this goes for IM interviews as well.

Tony Hung on Deep Jive Interests raised this flag in my mind when he talked about people faking friends on MySpace or companies paying to get articles voted to the top of Digg and then concluded:

Users of social media, and as it grows more prevalent, really, anyone who uses the Internet, needs to ask some fairly important questions on a fairly routine basis.

* Who am I really interacting with?
* Who is really behind this story?
* Who benefits from the promotion of this story?
* And above all — who has really earned my trust?

HarperCollins took their time, but have finally fired Judith Regan, the publisher of the cancelled O.J. Simpson book and the interviewer from the cancelled OJ TV interview on Fox. Thanks to The Flack for pointing out the good news.

The editor of Cracked magazine, Jay Pinkerton, did an interview that went rather badly, and he blogged about what it’s like to be on the other side of an interview:

In working for a magazine [that] conducts interviews, I’ve come across people who outright refuse to take questions by phone or in person, asking for them by email instead. I’d always figured it was because these people were huge pussies. Now I finally understand. It’s because doing an interview by phone or in person embodies all the negative aspects of public speaking (feeling the glare of the spotlight, knowing everything you say will be absorbed skeptically by a large group of strangers) without any of the perks (preparing your comments beforehand, practicing in front of a mirror).

Read all the details of My Bad Interview.

A friend of mine was given a message at work when he came back from lunch the other day: a newspaper reporter will stop by tommorrow to ask some questions. My friend writes an occasional column in a local paper and has been interviewed a couple of times before, so he didn’t think much of it and since the colleague had confirmed that he’d be available, my friend didn’t call back.

But when he walked in the next day, there was an entire camera crew in the lobby and a reporter shoving a mike in his face. Even though he’d been preparing thoughts for an interview, the presence of the camera and all the people threw him for a loop and he certainly hadn’t dressed for a TV appearance. My friend says he was extremely nervous because it was so unexpected and worries that it will come across poorly. We haven’t seen the finished TV segment yet - fingers crossed!

Now it would be perfectly reasonable in a situation like this to explain the misunderstanding and ask for a bit of time to settle yourself and your thoughts; possibly even change some of your clothing if that’s possible. Depending on the nature of the story and the crew’s schedule, it might even be possible to reschedule, but keep in mind that you’ve indirectly committed to the interview through your colleague.

This is why it’s so important for anyone setting up an interview to make sure you have all the facts straight - it can make a huge difference if you get it wrong.

Giving a bad interview, it turns out, is a lot like getting a bad haircut: you spend about a week trying to avoid it as a topic of conversation, and when someone mentions it, you preemptively degrade it, secretly hoping they’ll tell you it’s “not so bad;” that in fact having sideburns of unequal length and no hair at all on the sides of your head makes you look dangerous and handsome. Then someone will inevitably dismiss conversational etiquette and agree that, yep, you sure did get one godawful haircut. The next day you buy a hat.

- Jay Pinkerton, comedy writer and editor of Cracked magazine
from his blog piece My Bad Interview, written in the wake of giving a… bad interview

Ok, maybe this is a little paranoid, but my feeling is that if you’re doing an on-camera interview, try not to have anything very personal visible on camera.

Example: I was watching a nationally-televised interview last night and the person being interviewed had their laptop open just behind them on the desk. On the laptop screen was a picture of their children. Now the picture was large enough and close enough that you could see details of the faces. Had the topic been controversial, for example, some nut case suddenly has easy access to personal information about you.

I guess the bottom line is, having a picture of your children (or whatever else is very personal) isn’t relevant to the interview so why not remove it from view? I’m a better-safe-than-sorry kind of guy.

This reminds of the Kirstie Alley interview with Barbara Walters in which Barbara comments on a beautiful picture frame on the table, then she asks if it’s a picture of Kirstie’s mother. Turns out the picture was in the frame when Alley bought it and she just liked the photo. If you want pictures of kids in the background, buy a frame that’s got some kids in the advertising and stick that on your desk - your interview children

Picked up a book at the library the other day (yes, a building filled with printed books) called The Sound and the Fury and it turns out to be based on a web-site called Rock’s Back Pages. If you’re a music journalist doing research or a musician looking for some tips on how to conduct that next big interview, you’ll find literally thousands of interviews here. The interviews and articles are from all types of media, dating back to the fifties, as well as exclusive material from RBP. To view the material you need to subscribe or you can buy individual items.

“I remember she was great on air, sure we’ll book her.” What was interesting about this producer’s response was that he remembered this guest from a radio station where he used to work. Now he’s a TV producer and is booking an interview, no questions asked, because the woman had added value to his previous show.

I’ve spoken before about how doing a good interview can get you asked back or how producers talk amongst themselves about good and bad guests, but this incident reminded me that the tendency of media people to change jobs a lot can be a factor in your favour - if you do a good job.

The favourable impression you make on radio today may be getting you a TV booking two months from now. Or the local TV producer who moves to New York is suddenly in a position to book you nationally if they liked what they saw.

Sorry, nothing from me about the Barbara Walters special last night - The 10 Most Fascinating People of 2006. My apologies. Problem was, I couldn’t see it. For those outside of Canada, you may find this story a little bizarre:

Canadian government regulations require cable providers to automatically switch an American station to a Canadian station IF they’re both running the same programming at the same time. So, if Barbara Walters was on a Canadian station and an American station, the cable company’s computer would run the Canadian station in the slot where the American station normally sits… yeah, it’s a money grab by Canadian TV outlets who don’t want you viewing the ads on a US station if you could be seeing the same program with Canadian ads.

Problem was, the cable company didn’t automatically switch the ABC station back in - so the Canadian station which must have been running an ABC show earlier in the evening, was still in that slot come 10 o’clock. AND no Canadian station was airing Barbara… so I had a re-run of Law & Order out of the corner of my eye while I yelled at the cable company on the phone… alright, it was ten minutes into the phone call when the yelling started.

While you didn’t get any comments from me about Barbara’s interviews, you have become slightly more knowledgeable about life in Canada, for what that’s worth.