The Media Interview

Freelance writer Hrag Vartanian blogs about being misquoted: I was interviewed by Steve Malanga for a recent profile of Bushwick, Brooklyn for City Journal and found this paragraph that proved to me (yet again) that you should always be cautious about giving interviews, even to nice guys–which Steve obviously is: Some early arrivals claim that [...]

A fascinating new trend in interviewing has emerged during the course of the US presidential primaries: the live-to-web editorial board interview. Sitting around the table with editors of a media outlet is a long-standing tradition, but the idea of streaming it live over the internet adds some interesting new dimensions. Take the editorial board meeting [...]

During a meeting with the Sioux Falls Argus-Leader’s editorial board on May 23, 2008, which was streamed live over the internet, Hillary Clinton mentioned the assassination of Robert Kennedy in a passing comment about nomination campaigns historically lasting into June. That mention became the centre of a firestorm. Here’s the headline from the newspaper that [...]

A TV interview with New Zealand celebrity Nicky Watson late last year became an instant classic after this part of the encounter was repeated over and over in the MSM and the blogosphere: Watson: “I must have called [her lost] dog’s name a million times and I hope that when he hears my voice he [...]

Jon Greer blogs on B-Net – Catching Flack about when it’s not a good idea to insist on email interviews. He tells how the Ann Arbor News was writing a series about universities letting athletes take easy courses to maintain their scholarships: The paper sought an in-person or phone interview with [University of Michigan] president [...]

Sometimes you just have to wonder where an interviewer’s mind is… I’m watching a morning show and they are interviewing [homeless] survivors of a wave of tornadoes that hit Arkansas. Apparently one of these tornadoes hit before the sirens could go off… Interviewer: So tell me, there were no warning sirens for this one. How [...]

English football manager Avram Grant gave a bizarre press conference after his Chelsea team’s win over Everton on April 17 – so bizarre that The Independent ran an almost complete transcript. I say ‘almost’ because it doesn’t give a full sense of the pauses and silences. Anyway, here’s part of the one-word wonder at work, [...]

Heard a great story the other day while waiting in the green room at a TV station. Author Sue Johnson (Hold Me Tight) was saying how she once had a 5 minute TV appearance reduced to only 3 minutes because they couldn’t get a tiger off the set from the previous interview.

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 [...]

Answer: carry on as if they did and have your own people pose questions to you. That’s what FEMA did back on October 23rd. Having informed the media of a briefing on the California wildfires 15 minutes before it was to start, it’s not surprising that no one turned up. A couple of reporters listened [...]