The Media Interview

Still sifting through the reactions to Steve Rubel’s “Reinventing the Media Interview”, including my own. While we may see an increase in interviews conducted via email, I don’t think Steve’s suggestions on the use of blogs to conduct interviews will go far, given some of the reasons mentioned below. However, what I do see in the future is journalists reading blogs more and more to gather “interview-style” material.

Blogging is generally very conversational and spontaneous, so you find things on a blog that people wouldn’t put in a press release or on the front page of a conventional website, yet it’s all just as public. I think journalists are going to use these one-sided conversations more and more, certainly for research purposes, if not for actual quotes. Blogs are like email interview answers, but not always with the calculation and polish; they’re like one half of an interview transcript. Maybe blogs are Interview 2.0

Anway, here are a couple of more reactions to Steve:

Journalism student Ryan Holins hopes that Steve’s ideas die a quick death because he things interviews via email or blog comments don’t have the “spontaneity” of a live conversation, during which:

I can improvise, change my line of questioning, and respond to something you might find to be more interesting.

BTW, Ryan included IM as a type of live conversation.

Journalist Mark Evans complains that Steve’s suggestions “demonstrate a perplexing naivete” about journalism. The biggest stumbling block to the kind of open interview process Steve proposed?

none of us wants to give a rival reporter the slightest sniff about what stories we’re working on and who we’re interviewing

Evans agrees, however, that posting complete interview transcripts on the web is a great idea – AFTER a story is published.