The Media Interview

Jason McIntyre co-creator, writer, and editor, of the blog The Big Lead interviewed on Sports Media Guide:

Q. Do you do your interviews by e-mail or phone?

A. Kornheiser was over the phone – he doesn’t do e-mail. I prefer e-mail. I started doing it by e-mail because I was anonymous at the time and didn’t feel like I could call a major journalist like TJ Simer. Why would he take the time to talk to an anonymous blogger. I started out by e-mailing eight or ten questions.

People are more comfortable with e-mail because they know they won’t be misquoted. They can be far more eloquent explaining themselves in e-mail. Some people aren’t wordy but they might be wordsmiths on e-mail. I much prefer doing e-mail interviews. That was a sticking point with Richard Dietch (SI). He said no.

Barbara Walters on one of the main reasons she stopped doing the TV newsmagazine 20/20 back in 2004:

…it seemed that every celebrity, every murderer…had a lawyer or a press agent all interviewing the interviewer to determine where they could get the most airings for their clients, what kind of questions would be asked, and how much promotion and advertising would be guaranteed. The interviewer had to audition to land the interview.

From her memoir Audition, p.561.

The plastic surgeon who operated on Kanye West’s mother the day before she died, walked off CNN’s “Larry King Live” during an interview tonight.

Larry King opened the hour by saying that it wasn’t clear if Dr. Jan Adams would appear as promised. King said that West’s family had formally asked Adams not to go on the show, but that he was still conferring with his lawyers. King then proceeded to interview several entertainment reporters who had been lined up for later in the show.

Then came word that Dr. Adams would in fact appear, so King broke for a commercial. When they returned, Dr. Adams was seated across from King and it looked like everything was fine, until he proceeded to explain why he wasn’t going to do the interview. Dr. Adams then removed his mike, shook King’s hand, and walked off the set, leaving Kin to hastily go to another commercial:

Interviewed later on Anderson Cooper 360, King discussed what it was like having a guest walk off his show:

..I used to say ‘nothing has ever happened before that hasn’t happened before’, in other words I’ve had everything happen to me in fifty years - except THAT! I’ve had fires in the studio, I’ve had people fight… but I have NEVER had a guest rip off the mike and walk - and remain friendly; he stayed til the end, he was there at the end of the show; he was very friendly to me - he was - he took out - he said he was taking my producer to dinner because she had gone through so much over this.

The way NPR’s Bryant Park Project tells it, the Icelandic band Sigur Ros was at fault for what it calls “possibly the worst interview in the history of electronic media”.

Seriously.

It was that bad.

We’re not sure if they were tired, or if it was a language thing, or what… but wow.

Whereas most shows would just bury an interview like that, we’ve decided to actually show it to you. It certainly made us laugh. We hope you’ll enjoy it too.

And to repeat, we love this band. We are going to be the first people to buy their new album “Hvarf / Heima” when it comes out this November. And the concert documentary is beautiful — please go see it if it comes to your town.

Just never invite them on your radio show.

It certainly was awkward - the total number of words spoken wasn’t much more than the 4 musicians in the studio. Watch the video of the interview and see what you think.

While many commenters agreed with the show hosts about the band’s poor performance, others picked up on the fact that the interviewer - Luke Burbank - wasn’t much better:

ease up on the band. the interviewer was terrible. there is no continuity in the questions, and there is little attempt at being personable to the band which creates an awkward atmosphere. how else could you respond?

Sent by ros | 3:16 AM ET | 10-11-2007

Yes, terrible. But I think the main problem was the interviewer who asked questions leading nowhere…

“How dou you create music, do you just sit down and play?” - “……..u, yes”.

“What is Hopelandic, does it mean anything, is it Icelandic?” - “…….u, no, it’s just gibberish”.

And up to three questions at a time:
“Do you do this, or that and then just that?” - “……uuu, B”.

You can’t really look good in an interview like this unless you’re an interview- and conversational whizard

Sent by Hildur | 5:32 AM ET | 10-11-2007

But I’ll leave the last word to this commenter:

hahaha.. have you guys never seen a interview with Sigur R??s before???

This is normal.. this is how they are.. and thats why we love them….

Sent by Vuni | 5:38 AM ET | 10-11-2007

The Today Show’s Matt Lauer, talking with Larry King about the most fascinating person he’s ever interviewed:

LAUER: You know I’m one of these people who tends to think that the ordinary people are more fascinating than the celebrities and even the politicians. Celebrities and politicians are practiced, you know. I mean they’ve been asked these questions a hundred times. I like to catch someone who’s an ordinary person who finds themselves in extraordinary circumstances and get them at a point where they haven’t had a chance to think about what they want to say.

But I think anytime you sit down with the president of the United States, whether — however you feel about the politics of that person, going into the Oval Office or sitting down with the most powerful person arguably in the world, that interview becomes fascinating because you’ve got to bring your “A” game. If you mess that up, you mess it up on a big stage.

At least once in their careers, most journalists have had a technical problem that required them to re-do an interview. New York Times Senior Art Director Steven Heller, a widely-published design writer and editor, shared his experience in an email interview with Unbeige:

For years I would use my trusty cassette player — usually face to face, but sometimes over the phone with my trusty suction cup — until one day I did a great interview with the illustrator James McMullan and when I returned home, nada. Nothing recorded. Embarrassed, I had to ask him to do it all over again, and of course it wasn’t as spontaneous. This time I brought two machines and used them both. Good thing too, because one of them actually — believe it or not — didn’t work. … Now I use a digital recorder.

And don’t forget the extra set of batteries…

Love this story about Ernest Hemingway being interviewed by George Plimpton, as told by Philip Gourevitch, the current editor of the Paris Review, who was interviewed on Powells.com by Dave Weich.

Gourevitch: A few days ago I was in L.A., and I was talking about the book [The Paris Review Interviews, Vol I] with Stephen Gaghan, the guy who wrote Traffic and wrote and directed Syriana. A long time ago, Stephen was a Paris Review intern.

He remembered being with George Plimpton once, and he asked about the Hemingway interview. George had this kind of patrician accent. He told Stephen, “I remember one morning when we were down in Cuba, we were going out tarpon fishing. We went down to the pier in the morning, and he was putting all the gear in the boat to go out for the day. I was coming down the pier, and I said, ‘Papa! I’ve been wanting to ask you about the white birds.’”

Hemingway turned around and said, “What’s that?” So Plimpton explained, “The white birds. You know? In your stories, at a significant moment, the white birds appear.”

Hemingway took two steps toward him and clocked him. He knocked him out cold.

Dave: Wow. Great story.

Gourevitch: I like it because it reminds you what a dangerous business literary interviewing is.

Came across this great anecdote in an article on interview techniques by Deborah Potter, Executive Director of NewsLab. It’s a perfect example of how narrow, closed questions can keep you from getting the information you need.

Robert Siegel, who works for National Public Radio in Washington, D.C., tells the story of an interview he did with a Turkish diplomat after Pope John Paul II was shot and wounded by a Turk in Rome. His first question, “Do you know any details about this man, Mehmet Ali Agca; where he lived in Italy, what he did there, what kind of visa the Italians gave him?” The answers were all no. After several more tries, Siegel paused, about to give up. And the diplomat filled the silence with this, “… except that he is the most famous convicted murderer in Turkey, who escaped from prison after assassinating the editor of one of our major newspapers.” Siegel says he almost lost a good story by asking questions that were too narrow. He acknowledges that a better way to open the interview might have been, “Tell me about this man.”

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.

In June 2004, Irish journalist Carole Coleman did a now-famous interview with George Bush (full transcript here) in which she pushed the US President about the war in Iraq in a way that few had done before that time. She subsequently wrote a book that takes off from that interview - Alleluia America: An Irish Journalist in Bush Country - an excerpt of which appeared in the Times Online.

The excerpt offers fascinating insights into how interviews with the President are arranged, conducted, and, as this example shows, how they are sometimes followed up by White House staff:

“We just want to say how disappointed we are in the way you conducted the interview,” she [White House press officer identified as MC] said.

“How is that?” I asked.

“You talked over the president, not letting him finish his answers.”

“Oh, I was just moving him on,” I said, explaining that I wanted some new insight from him, not two-year-old answers.

“He did give you plenty of new stuff.”

She estimated that I had interrupted the president eight times and added that I had upset him. I was upset too, I told her. The line started to break up; I was in a basement with a bad phone signal. I took her number and agreed to call her back. I dialled the White House number and she was on the line again.

“I’m here with Colby,” she indicated.

“Right.”

“You were given an opportunity to interview the leader of the free world and you blew it,” she began.

I was beginning to feel as if I might be dreaming. I had naively believed the American president was referred to as the “leader of the free world” only in an unofficial tongue-in-cheek sort of way by outsiders, and not among his closest staff.

“You were more vicious than any of the White House press corps or even some of them up on Capitol Hill . . .The president leads the interview,” she said.

“I don’t agree,” I replied, my initial worry now turning to frustration. “It’s the journalist’s job to lead the interview.”

It was suggested that perhaps I could edit the tapes to take out the interruptions, but I made it clear that this would not be possible.

As the conversation progressed, I learnt that I might find it difficult to secure further co-operation from the White House. A man’s voice then came on the line. Colby, I assumed. “And, it goes without saying, you can forget about the interview with Laura Bush.”

Clearly the White House had thought they would be dealing with an Irish “colleen” bowled over by the opportunity to interview the Bushes. If anyone there had done their research on RTE’s interviewing techniques, they might have known better.

MC also indicated that she would be contacting the Irish Embassy in Washington — in other words, an official complaint from Washington to Dublin.

“I don’t know how we are going to repair this relationship, but have a safe trip back to Ireland,” MC concluded. I told her I had not meant to upset her since she had been more than helpful to me. The conversation ended.