Who is it on the other end of the email?
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?
Posted: December 19th, 2006 under Email Interviews, Getting an Interview, IM Interviews, Media Interview Trends, Technology and Media Interviews, Tips for Interviewees.