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Interview Approaches Used By JournalistsDeirdre ByrneDr. Schmidt

Interviewing Principles

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

I. Introduction: Pages 2-3

II. Schedule of Questions: Pages 3-4

III. Transcript of Interview: Pages 4-11

IV. Analysis of Interview: Pages 11-34

a. Analyzing Question Schedule Compared to Questions asked in Interview

b. Self-Analysis in Interview

V. Thank You Notes: pages 35-36

I. Introduction

In this paper I am analyzing approaches to interviewing used by journalists. On

Friday, December 6, 2013, I interviewed Dr. Carrie Buchanan, who is currently taking a

semester off teaching Journalism classes at John Carroll University working on a project

for her Grauel Fellowship. I met Dr. Buchanan for the interview in her office at John

Carroll University on a Friday afternoon and I recorded the audio of it with an application

called “Garage Band” on my Macbook Pro.

Dr. Buchanan has worked as a reporter and editor for 15 years before leaving the

newspaper business in 2000 before she pursued her doctorate in Communication. As a

Canada native she has worked for 12 years for the major daily newspaper, Ottawa

Citizen, for Canada’s capital. Additionally, she is an active blogger and is the faculty

adviser for John Carroll’s chapter of Society of Professional Journalists.

I decided to focus my field project in looking at the interview approaches used by

journalists because I am very interested in the field of journalism. As an undergraduate

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student I have taken many journalism classes in my major and it is a career that I feel

very interested in pursuing. After taking two classes with Dr. Buchan, I decided to

interview her for this field project because of her expertise and passion in the Journalism

field. I had already learned a lot about interviewing from her in class, but I thought that

setting up an interview with her personally would give me even more detailed

information about her experiences and knowledge about interviewing outside of the

classroom.

The interview included in this paper covers the basic information on interviewing

that journalists need to know for when covering a story. This paper contains an outline of

questions that I organized to use in my 25 minute interview with Dr. Buchanan, a

transcript of her interview, and also an analysis of my findings.

II. Schedule of Questions

Intro - Thanks for interviewing with me! In my interview principles class we are doing field projects about interview methods in different careers we are interested, and since I am interested in getting into journalism I thought youd be perfect to interview because of all of your personal experience. This interview is only going to take 25 minutes, so thank you for your time. I’m just going to ask you some questions about the types of interviews you have done, the challenges you have faced, and so on. So I will star by asking1. Obviously as a journalist your job is to report the news, so why is interviewing an

important aspect to this position? a. When do you know you need to interview a person for a story? b. What types of stories in journalism is it most important to interview people?

i. How many people do you need to interview for a story?c. What type of person do you choose for your story?

i. How do you know what person to choose?2. Could you tell me how you determine which type of interview method to use for a

story? (face to face, phone, survey, etc)? a. Is there a method that you use most frequently?

i. Which one?b. Which type of interview is most ideal?c. What type of methods is the least ideal?

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d. I know that journalism has changed with the internet, so have you seen a change over the years in the types of methods that are more commonly used? (like are there more email interviews now? )

e. Have you ever had to do a survey for a story you were writing? 3. How do you prepare for an interview ahead of time?

a. Do you research your interviewees?i. Could you tell me a little about that process?

b. How do you prepare a schedule of questions?i. If you have to ask a difficult question, where do you decide to place

this question in the schedule?1. Why?

c. How structured is your schedule of questions and do you follow this schedule exactly as it is?

4. Who is the most interesting person you have interviewed?a. What made this person a good interviewer?

5. What is the biggest challenge you have in interviewing people?a. What was the most challenging interview you ever dealt with?b. How do you deal with interviewees who are either too talkative or too quiet

and don’t give any information?6. Could you tell me about the different ethical dilemmas that come up during

interviews in journalism?a. Are there any questions that legally you are not allowed to ask? b. Have you ever interviewed a person that gives you information that is “off the

record”?i. Do you use anonymous sources in your stories?

c. Have you ever faced a situation where a person claimed they were misquoted in your story?

i. How do you handle that?7. What is the biggest piece of advice you would like to give to aspiring journalists?8. Is there anything else you would like to talk about that maybe I haven’t covered?

CLOSE – That is all the questions that I have for you today, thank you for taking the time to interview with me today. I will let you know if I need any more information.

III. TRANSCRIPT OF INTERVIEW

(1:08)

1. As a journalist, your job is to report the news, so why do you think interviewing is an important aspect of this job?

Interviewing is part of the verification process. So journalism is about two types of skills, there’s the writing and presentation skills, and then there’s the verification of all the facts that we have to present. And we count on journalist to actually verify information before they present it to us, and so you have to call people and talk to a lot of people, and you

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have to make sure that they’re telling the truth. And you have to make sure that they are actually knowledgeable about what they’re talking about – that they really are the best source you can be talking to – and if they’re not, where are they getting their information? So it’s all about that verification process.

(2:01)

2. And how do you decide which person you interview has the best access to the truth?

This is something that, first, get their credentials – are they a professor for example? Which really gives you a person that is supposedly neutral, which we all know professors are not necessarily neutral, I mean human beings are not neutral, so you have credentials. Or perhaps they are on one side or another on an issue, so you could balance, and talk to the two people, three people—however many sides there are, but you have to choose a spokesperson that you can get a hold of, that’s another thing, on the issue, that will talk to you in time for your deadline. So there’s a whole lot of competing issues on how you will choose the person you will talk to, and you usually will speak with more than one, in fact more than two, and in order to get those two you need to make a lot of calls because only two of them are going to answer you [laughs] so it’s a challenge.

(3:17)

3. With picking the type of people, obviously there’s different types of interviewing, you can do it on the phone, in person, even if you do a survey interview, so I guess how do you determine which is an on the phone interview and which is an in person interview, even if you’ve ever done a survey interview, how do you determine that?

Right, where you send out an email and say “Please answer me” and give a list of questions or something like that – I’ve done all kinds of interviews, including contacting people who have made a comment about something on twitter, so you really can use all different kinds of media and each one has sort of a level. So what you need to do is this sort of juggling information in your mind. Obviously, you know you are going to get the most absolute most information from a sit down, face to face interview. That is the best type of interview under any circumstances. The second best, for me, would be on the phone. I have done a lot of phone interviews, and I can pick up things in people’s voices, I’m very auditory, so for me, the phone is very good. But Skype is also good, you can see people on skype…. One thing that one of my former students that’s covering the Middle East recently told me is that people on twitter and social media can fake their identities so you have to be really careful to check and verify even the source that you’re talking to….it’s a very complex puzzle of how much time do you have? Who can you actually get a hold of? And how many of those interviews can you fit in because you want more than one, and how many hours do you have? In journalism you usually sit in the office and talk on the phone or if you can go to one site where all those people come together that’s a really important thing. And in fact, I found that city hall, was one of the best places to

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be in the city—it was much better than being in the newsroom—because people came to city hall, and so you would get all the different parts of the polis… which involves the government people, the elected people, the bureaucrats that work for the elected people and the publicrats which are people that work for the public, and the public itself, would all get together in one place to thrash out various issues. So there have been times I have been at city hall and the circus came… people came from the circus, and all the media showed up! Because here you had all the parts from the polis and the circus and you had great stories coming out of it. So if you can go to one place where they all are then you have that visual verification that what you are seeing is actually true, you have the auditory, you can hear them and talk to them…even if you can’t get them aside to talk to them, you can quote what they say in public. So city hall is great for that reason and that’s why reporters hang out at city hall.

(6:29)

4. So with city hall then, it’s kind of like you’re listening to what they’re saying, so do you go up to them after to talk to them?

Absolutely. There are always things that people will “Fudge” when they’re talking in public and fudge means to make it deliberately unclear. So if you’re a professional journalist, you’ll notice those things and go up to them and ask follow up questions and that’s a really important to ask those follow up questions. And sometimes you can’t! Like when President Obama speaks, only so many people can go up to him and ask follow up questions. And the other people are out of luck that day, but with other people you can get them out of the meeting and talk to them outside afterwards.

(7:17)

5. So I guess too when you prepare to ask them the question, like when you have that follow up with the politician, how do you prepare ahead of time in terms of maybe researching a person, or preparing a schedule of questions?

Well in fact you never even go to an event without doing research first, and I guess I should have mentioned that at the beginning—the very first thing you do right before you do anything is as much research as you can possibly fit in to the time allowed. Now, I remember going into the newsroom on a Sunday afternoon at 4 oclock because I was working the 4-midnight shift and being asked to get in touch with someone in Ireland—where it was 10 oclock at night—a very senior person in the demilitarization gun thing in Ireland, John Deschastilan, he was the Canadian general that was in charge of that, I wwas supposed to get in touch with him, I had no phone number, I had nothing… So how much research was I going to be able to do before I actually started phoning people? Almost zero, because I had to get on the phone because I aws gonna be waking people up, or they were just going to bed –they were 5-6 hours ahead ..so I had to call our people in London, get a phone number for Deschastilan, a home phone number for Deschastilan, phone Deschastilan, and by the time I did it was 2 oclock in the morning because I did do some research—I didn’t know a thing about decommissioning! And the

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first thing he said to me was “WHAT HAPPENED?!??!” because some dreadful thing must have happened that he didn’t know about—like some leader had been killed! Because I was waking him up at 2 oclock in the morning! Anyway I needed to have done my research, and I did feel embarrassed in that interview because I hadn’t done enough, I hadn’t done what I normally do, but I didn’t do enough.

(9:08)

6. Was he able to see that you weren’t as knowledgeable?

Oh yeah! It took him about 30 seconds, he said “Well if you were really as knowledgeable as your friend Aileen”—I had to drop the name of my friend in London, my friend and colleague, and say “Aileen gave me your number she realized I had to ask these questions of you personally rather than her.” And I yelled at Aileen as much until I relied on Aileen… and they should have had Aileen do the story, it was stupid! Anyway, you get in these situations sometimes where an editor will get a whim, where an editor is like “I want this story for the front page” and they have some confidence that you’re gonna be able to get it for them, which is kind of an honor, but you know, I felt so stupid.

(9:58)

7. Since that was a challenging instance that you had to deal with, what other challenges have you faced conducting an interview with a person?

Demonstrating to the person that you are knowledgable without taking up any of their time because you want them to talk, so getting them to talk is one of the biggest challenges with some people. With other people it’s getting them to talk about what you want—they’ll talk a lot but they will talk without saying anything. There are many people that are very well trained in how to talk without saying anything—there are special training courses for this for people in the government! And then there are other people who will try to convince you that they don’t know anything about the topic and they’ll tell you that you should really talk to someone else. Which is an endless look – I had a friend that once told me that every one government official had one one fact they could talk about, so she wished she could phone them up and say “Give me the one fact!” because they would say “no I’m not the right person to talk to about that” and then finally she would get to one question where they could talk about the answer. So finding the right person, making sure they don’t talk about things that you do not want talked about, but they talk about your topic, and getting a person to talk when they are reluctant. These are all questions about controlling the interview. And you control the interview through a carefully prepared sequence of questions, you start off with the easy questions, the things that they’re gonna want to talk about, and you lead up to a point where they start to trust you… and feel you have done your homework and are trustworthy. You are proving yourself as well through some of those questions you ask and some of your followups.

(12:06)

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8. And I guess then with that idea of having to “gain the trust,” obviously there’s a lot of ethical dilemmas that come into journalism, how do you handle a person that said maybe an interview with them to be “off the record” and not to be published?

That’s very important—off the record is a really complex thing because there are several levels. A person can be off the record such that you just don’t use their name but you can actually quote them, you can even say what their position is but you just can’t use their name, so you have to negotiate. The other off the records can be, you can’t quote them at all, but you can say basically what they said without using a direct quote, but you cant use their name or position – and that’s called deep backround. Deep Background is you cant say anything that would even divulge that you know this person. So the guy called “Deep Throat” in “All the Presidents Man” …he was in such danger if anyone found out he was leaking information, that he was worried about first of all that he would lose his job but also worse like being killed for divulging information. So he told Bob Woodworth, the guy who wrote the Nixon story with Carl Bernstein, I will only confirm or deny things that you tell me that you get from somebody else, and so he was on deep backround. Woodword didn’t reveal who he was until after he died, as in Deep Throat died.

(13:56)

9. Have you personally had to deal with a situation, maybe not that extreme—

I did. I did. There was somebody who was an office assistant to a city counselor and he was cracking up. And he was really having a nervous breakdown and this assistant was so upset about this situation and he knew about a car accident that this city counselor had had and he said this is eating away at me, I gotta talk to somebody about it and I gotta make sure something is done, so he came to me—he actually said it was like talking to a priest and he was a Catholic—so it was an interesting thing for me to be in that situation but I couldn’t reveal anything about where I got this information, I couldn’t even reveal anything that could lead people to the person who gave me the information. And I have never told anyone who gave me the information—except you! Because you don’t know who the council member was or what city it was in.

(15:06)

10. Did you get any backlash about that story? Actually the worst thing that happened was somebody ended up breaking the story before I did. However what I got was a rich and deeply nuanced portrait of this member of council that was ready to go the minute it came out, however the reason it didn’t break first was because I had an editor that was waiting on confirmations. We were very careful with that story and the other paper was not that careful. And actually they got a source that I didn’t have because they were actually police reporters and I was a city hall reporter.

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(15:52)

11. Also going along with the legal things involved—

You know I was so worried about defaming the council member in question, you know what if this turned out not to be true? So yes that is the primary obligations. You know abiding by the legal rules, especially about libel, has protected me ethically as well. I also dealt with people that said they were outside the law. You know, the Mohawk warriors, they were a native group that had a big uprising in Canada, and they said “well we’re not, Canadian law doesn’t apply to us” and I still did all the legal things I would normally do to protect myself against libel suits and it means that I was ethical. That what I learned what really helps.

(16:45)

12. Has there ever been a situation where somebody you interviewed read the story and claimed to be misquoted because they weren’t perceived the way they wanted to be?

Yeah. People often, well it’s not often, people usually say I was fair. I would say 99% of the people I dealt with said “You were very fair.” The other 1% were people who were paid to call me, to tell me that this person was misquoted. And my question to them is “Was there a factual error?” or “What was the misquote?” or they would say “Oh well it was just out of context. You quoted them accurately, but it was not in a full context” as if I would have had to write a book to include the full context they wanted. So I went over it, and I always listen careful, I always try to be as honest and careful as possible. So yes there were occasions where people would call me. It was usually this person called Rob Dolan who was at the regional government, and so if I would misquote the regional chair who he worked for which was like Ed Fitzgerald here in Cleveland who is the Lead County Executive, if I had misquoted his regional chair, or he felt I had misquoted him, which I never had, I had always had it on tape, he would get Rob Dolan to call me and I would say “Rob what’s the factual error?” And he would say “There isn’t one” and we would say conversation over. And by the time this had happened a few times, it just was really clear that I had always checked all my facts. But yeah, there’s always people that will phone you and will claim to be misquoted. And you have to carefully go over it. And you really have to listen, you can’t just assume that you are right.

(18:39)

13. *hesitates*

One of the things about interviews is time limits and sometimes you’ll only get 10 minutes with a cabinet minister or something like that, and you have to make sure you get in all your questions and also all your follow ups in that 10 minutes and it’s hard

(19:06)

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14. And I guess as you have been in the business for so long, you have seen journalism transform from print journalism to stuff on the media, so how has that changed the way you interview and the approaches you use. We talked about how there’s skype you can use and you find stuff on twitter, so how has that changed the way you do interviews?

Yes, there are so many more media you can use; there are so many more people you can listen to. Sometimes you’re not actually able to get ahold of them 1-1, so you have to say “This information came from twitter or this information came from facebook, or something like that.” Because as my former student Hebba who is now covering the middle east, she told me people have been completely fooled by people on twitter and facebook etc etc, so not only do you have to do an interview but you have to verify that the person who did the interview is actually the person they claim to be. It used to be in the old days, you had a beat, you had a way of knowing who the people were that you were dealing with. These were people you met in person, and it used to be that we would cover things locally, or nationally or whatever as a beat. So you were there, you were physically present in the place that you were covering. Nowadays, there are many people covering stories to which they are not physically present in the area they are covering. Syria – you can see many reporters doing their standup outside the white house on television and reporting on Syria using stock footage – they’re not there, they’ve never been there. And any person that they’re quoting or any footage that they have from Syria, you need to know whether that stuff is actually real. Maybe that was taken somewhere else years ago. You don’t know. So this is a new challenge in interviewing and in verifying information.

(21:12)

15. Do you think that’s why the in-person/on the phone interview can give you more credibility than conducting an interview from Syria that you don’t really—

Yeah, say you doing it by email, say the person is fooling you. You know you have no way of knowing that the person on the other side of the email is who they claim to be. You do have a lot more credibility, even on the phone. Unless you can see them or have other people that can verify. Or you have met them and know their voice. Or you have seen them on tv and you know their voice. If you were doing an interview with President Obama for example, you would recognize his voice. You would have to go through a whole bunch of channels to get that interview and several people would verify that this is President Obama, that you’re gonna be speaking to. So that’s part of the process to. So there are several ways that you can verify, and Hebba actually did a whole talk at this conference that I was in in Ottawa, this former student of mine, I was so proud of her, talking about the various ways they deal with these situations in the middle east.

(22:22)

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16. Sometimes when you deal with interviews, sometimes you have the people that will give you nothing and you have to keep probing, and you also have the more talkative interviewees who are not going in the direction you are hoping. Then, I guess, how do you redirect the interviews to people that are more talkative or keep probing for people who give short answers.

Well there are different techniques, but establishing control is the main one. And one of the ways that you establish control is at the very beginning you let them give the messages they want to give. And there’s a guy named John Slewanski, he’s done an awful lot of studying and writing about interviewing. He’s a Canadian but you know he’s trained people at all different tv networks –including the sports networks, ESPN, etc—he’s trained all their people. And, Sowatski says the time that you spend on what he calls “development,” that first 5-10 minutes, where you let them get their messages out, because they will have some key messages that they will want to express. So let them do it, and then start asking them those probing follow up questions. But by doing that, you actually do start establishing some control. You let them speak their piece, but have a firm hand at getting them to stop – you have to interrupt them – all these things that I was taught as a girl, I should not interrupt people, I should always listen to what they say—I’m so rude now, when I was at this international council, I was hearing a panhel, and one of these eminent international guys spoke up and asked a question following on someone elses previous question, and I acutally found myself interrupting him and correcting something he was saying. And I found myself thinking, wow that’s the journalist in me, you know doing this, here’s this emininent guy, he’s the key note speaker for the whole thing, and I’m interrupting him. I should never had done that! But I had to, it’s a journalist skill. I had to interrupt him, no matter who they were in order to correct that information if they were wrong, or I was wrong, or I had misunderstood…so that’s what I had to do. I’m very rude.

(24:47)

17. What piece of advice you have for any person going into journalism that wants to get good at interviewing?

Prepare your questions ahead of time, do your homework, and get more than one source on your research, don’t just sort of go to Wikipedia and read what’s there—although don’t miss Wikipedia! Don’t forget Wikipedia! In journalism we always look at Wikipedia… (interview pauses for knock on door and closes after this)

IV. Analysis of Interview

a. Analyzing Question Outline

As far as the information that I was able to receive from Dr. Buchanan, she talked

a lot about the information that I was looking for and even answered questions I was

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looking for in other questions that I had. I am not going to look at my original question

guide and compare it to the questions that I asked.

In terms of the opening of my interview went, I think before I even started

recording we had some rapport developed – Dr. Buchanan has known me for the past two

years, so it was not as if I was meeting a stranger, so therefore we had a pretty positive

first impression. I told her how long the interview should take and that it was going to be

used for my field project, so I think I did a good job immediately orienting her to the

interview and giving her my personal credentials as a student in an Interviewing

Principles class and I explained that this interview was being done for my field project. I

think I did do a good job opening the interview and explaining what it was used for.

Now, in this next section I am looking at the original questions that I planned for my

interview and noting which questions were answered, and I analyze the questions that I

actually used in the interview as well.

Original Questions

* ✓means that the question was asked in the interview, or Dr. Buchanan managed to provide an answer for it even if it was not outright asked.

1. Obviously as a journalist your job is to report the news, so why is interviewing an important aspect to this position? ✓

a. When do you know you need to interview a person for a story? ✓b. What types of stories in journalism is it most important to interview people?

✓i. How many people do you need to interview for a story? ✓

c. What type of person do you choose for your story? ✓i. How do you know what person to choose? ✓

2. Could you tell me how you determine which type of interview method to use for a story? (face to face, phone, survey, etc)? ✓

a. Is there a method that you use most frequently? ✓i. Which one? ✓

b. Which type of interview is most ideal? ✓c. What type of methods is the least ideal? ✓

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d. I know that journalism has changed with the internet, so have you seen a change over the years in the types of methods that are more commonly used? (like are there more email interviews now? ) ✓

e. Have you ever had to do a survey for a story you were writing? 3. How do you prepare for an interview ahead of time? ✓

a. Do you research your interviewees? ✓i. Could you tell me a little about that process? ✓

b. How do you prepare a schedule of questions? i. If you have to ask a difficult question, where do you decide to place

this question in the schedule? ✓1. Why? ✓

c. How structured is your schedule of questions and do you follow this schedule exactly as it is?

4. Who is the most interesting person you have interviewed? a. What made this person a good interviewer?

5. What is the biggest challenge you have in interviewing people? ✓a. What was the most challenging interview you ever dealt with?b. How do you deal with interviewees who are either too talkative or too quiet

and don’t give any information? ✓6. Could you tell me about the different ethical dilemmas that come up during

interviews in journalism? ✓a. Are there any questions that legally you are not allowed to ask? b. Have you ever interviewed a person that gives you information that is “off the

record”? ✓i. Do you use anonymous sources in your stories? ✓

c. Have you ever faced a situation where a person claimed they were misquoted in your story? ✓

i. How do you handle that? ✓7. What is the biggest piece of advice you would like to give to aspiring journalists? ✓8. Is there anything else you would like to talk about that maybe I haven’t covered? ✓

* The bolded questions are the questions that I did not receive an answer because I did not ask the question, and none of her answers provided me with information related to the question.

How I phrased the questions in the interview & Analysis:

1. As a journalist, your job is to report the news, so why do you think interviewing is

an important aspect of this job?

Besides how I did not exactly stick with my original wording of the question, I think I

did a good job in opening the interview and getting the first question right out. For the

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most part with this question she was able to with her answer, already answer some of my

probing questions:

When do you know you need to interview a person for a story?

What types of stories in journalism is it most important to interview people?

How many people do you need to interview for a story?

What type of person do you choose for your story?

How do you know what person to choose?

I started with this question because I felt that although it seems like an obvious

answer as to why a journalist would feel interviewing is an important aspect of their job, I

felt like it could allow her to have a simple first question to answer, and get her to start

talking to make sure she gets comfortable later on in really starting to open up to me and

give me useful information.

She discussed how journalism was important because it allowed the journalist to

verify the information that they present to the world – so in that sense she had covered

the answer to my probing question “When do you know you need to interview a person

for a story?” She answered my question that I would have probed her with “When do

you know you need to interview a person for a story?” by saying that she needed to

interview people when she needed facts to be verified. She gave examples about making

sure that the source is knowledgeable and that they have a good source for their

information.

2. And how do you decide which person you interview has the best access to the

truth?

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This question was not in my question schedule, but I asked it because Dr.

Buchanan was discussing in question 1 how she thinks interviewing people is a good way

of verifying the truth. In a way it sort of was a probe I had for number one “What type of

person do you choose for your story?” but I rephrased it during the interview so that it

could relate to her interview and show her that I was listening and paying attention to

what she was saying.

I also found with this probe that Dr. Buchanan was continuing to answer the other

probing questions that I hadn’t asked yet, like by saying that she usually had to interview

more than one person she was already answering another probe for my original question

for how do you know how many questions you need to ask.

3. With picking the type of people, obviously there’s different types of interviewing,

you can do it on the phone, in person, even if you do a survey interview, so I guess

how do you determine which is an on the phone interview and which is an in person

interview, even if you’ve ever done a survey interview, how do you determine that?

With this question, I feel like maybe I was unprepared in asking it so I started

rambling a bit instead of just getting straight to the question which was supposed to be

“Could you tell me how you determine which type of interview method to use for a

story? (face to face, phone, survey, etc)?” So I would not call this particular question a

double barreled question because I am asking her how to determine which type of

interview to conduct, but I seem to over explain what I am asking and ask the same

question about two times.

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However, I think I unintentionally over explain the question as a way of trying to

seem more natural and conversational, but sometimes it seems awkward in the interview.

She was also able to answer a lot of the probes in my schedule in this question like:

“Which type of interview is most ideal?” – this was a probe that I had planned in

my original schedule and in this question she answered this question by saying

that the sit down face-to-face interview was the most ideal, but she also suggested

that phone interviews are just as ideal.

“What type of methods is the least ideal?” – She did not outright say that it was

the least ideal, but she said that the problem with social media is that you cannot

verify your sources because of the anonymity of the internet.

Despite my wordiness of the question, I think it’s good that I allowed it to be open so

that Dr. Bucanan was able to give me so much information because I could have made it

closed by saying, “What’s the best type of interview: an on the phone? In person? Etc

etc?” but that would not have allowed her to be able to answer my question thoroughly

like she did as she was able to explain the benefits of various approaches in journalism,

the problems and even give examples like she did talking about her student and the

benefits of city hall.

I did think that when she started talking about city hall she started rambling a bit and

taking my question in a different direction and talked about how it’s a beneficial place to

go to get questions, so I asked her question number four because I wanted to see if she

was able to not just sit at city hall and listen to politicians talk about the news to get

stories, but question four would redirect it to get her to focus on if city hall was another

place where it was possible to interview people.

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4. So with city hall then, it’s kind of like you’re listening to what they’re saying, so

do you go up to them after to talk to them?

On my part, I did not do a good job phrasing it. I am guessing I was not

completely ready with my probe, and it is apparent with me saying “kind of” and the

word “like.” With her answer talking about how she does go up to politicians after the

city hall meetings, she talked about how occasionally politicians will stretch the truth so

she wants to make sure it’s verified. At this point, I could definitely see that Dr.

Buchanan really has had a lot of skill interviewing people and being interviewed because

she seemed to develop a focused message of the importance of journalists interviewing in

that the facts need to be verified. This was about the third time that she mentioned this in

her response, so I thought this was really good to continue to emphasize in different ways

so that the interviewee (in this case myself) can go away from the interview remembering

the important messages.

Overall however I thought this was a good probe to make sure that the interview

stays in the direction focused on interviewing in journalism. In a sense it was also just

another informational probe because I was looking for additional information since I was

uncertain if she was implying that she was allowed to actually interview the politicians

after the city hall meetings, or if she was just listening to them talk and recording down

information that they were saying from the audience. Having this informational probe

definitely succeeded in clearing up that confusion.

5. So I guess too when you prepare to ask them the question, like when you have

that follow up with the politician, how do you prepare ahead of time in terms of

maybe researching a person, or preparing a schedule of questions?

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Throughout this interview I continuously say, “So I guess too…” and I believe I

did this too in my career interview in class, and I think that I do that as a nervous habit,

but I feel like starting the questions off with “So I guess with” it makes me sound less

confident which could negatively affect the interviewee feeling as if I have confidence

and control in the interview.

Also, this question follows the question “How do you prepare for an interview

ahead of time?” which is the third question in my schedule, so I think that at this point, I

was doing a good job of staying on the question schedule that I had planned out. I

rephrased the questions from the original question like here by adding “like when you

have that follow up with the politician” to show Dr. Buchanan that I was listening to her

questions and to transition into a new topic of the interview smoothly.

One great thing about her answer I felt, was she was able to share a funny story

about how she was not prepared to interview John Deschastilan because she did not have

enough time to research the issue. I thought that this answer was really interesting, and

now I am looking at my original questions that I planned out and I feel that maybe asking

“What do you do when you are not prepared for an interview?” or something to that

extent would have been valuable. Thankfully she did share this information with me, and

I felt that at this point of the story, I felt really engaged with her story and found it funny

and I feel like hearing her feel comfortable and joking with me felt more comfortable that

I was establishing trust and feeling a bit more comfortable with my questions.

6. Was he able to see that you weren’t as knowledgeable?

This question I do feel really was simple, but it just seemed to flow from my mind

out of curiosity which I thought was good because it started making the interview on my

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part a bit more organic. Here I was genuinely curious so I just asked and did not have to

overthink the phrasing. She was funny again in providing the information saying that

Deschastilan did notice that she was not prepared for the interview and he called her out

on it. This I thought was a really valuable lesson that Dr. Buchanan presented me with,

because as she shared in her story, due to the circumstances she genuinely did not have

enough time to prepare for the interview, but by not researching him ahead of time and

knowing the information, the interviewee was able to tell immediately.

Seeing that this was a hardship that she had faced during an interview as she

admitted that it made her feel somewhat “stupid” at the end, I felt that this would be a

good opportunity to ask #5 in my original sequence question, “What is the biggest

challenge you have in interviewing?”

7. Since that was a challenging instance that you had to deal with, what other

challenges have you faced conducting an interview with a person?

With this question, I definitely rephrased it from the original way that it was

worded asking what the biggest challenge that she dealt with is, but I feel like by asking

her for other examples of challenges that was a better new question. Asking what the

“biggest” challenge is just seems so specific and I feel like that would be somewhat

making that question a bit closed whereas this one acknowledged that there are so many

challenges in interviewing people, so I just wanted her to share whatever came to her

mind first.

Here Dr. Buchanan really delved into a lot of ideas we talked about in class, like

how getting people to talk about what you want them to talk about poses as a problem,

and establishing control in the interview can be difficult and also making sure you

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develop a sense of trust with the interviewee. I also thought it was interesting that she

talked about how she will often run into interviewees who have special training to talk a

certain way so that they are not really providing any sort of useful information.

8. And I guess then with that idea of having to “gain the trust,” obviously there’s a

lot of ethical dilemmas that come into journalism, how do you handle a person that

said maybe an interview with them to be “off the record” and not to be published?

This question, again I starting off again by saying “And I guess,” as I noted before

that I frequently do throughout this interview, whereas I could just start by saying “Going

along with that idea of ‘gaining trust…’” Although I think this is an interesting question,

I think maybe I really jumped into this topic quickly instead of leading Dr. Buchanan to

talk about it. Perhaps by also talking about the “ethical dilemmas” it was phrased in the

manner of a leading question suggesting that when a person asks an interview to be “off

the record” that it poses as an ethical dilemma for Dr. Buchanan.

Her answer to this question was really informative about how there are many

different levels of “off the record” that is important for journalists to be aware of, like

sometimes you can quote them but are not allowed to use their name but could possibly

use their position. She explained how sometimes people who ask to be off the record do

so because of safety question, so I thought this was maybe a good question to take the

information she was giving me and probe into asking her for a specific question.

9. Have you personally had to deal with a situation, maybe not that extreme—

Dr. Buchanan did interrupt me finishing the question here, but I never felt

comfortable finishing it or talking over her because as the interviewer I wanted to make

sure I was polite. Maybe that showed that in some way I was lacking in control, but at

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the same time, I am a student and she is a professor, so in this interview although I had

control as the interviewer, there was a difference in the level of status so I feel like

knowing she had been in the business for a while and used to be my professor, at times it

made me hesitant to try and be assertive.

However, in no way did Dr. Buchanan interrupt to be rude, I think she just knew

where I was going with the answer and already was ready with her response. I am glad

that I waited to ask a somewhat difficult question in this spot of the interview, rather than

asking it right at the beginning or even at the end. We had already covered eight other

questions so I felt this was a good place to probe with a more personal question. She

ended up giving me a response about a story she did with a city counselor who confided

in her about a car accident, so she let his name be anonymous in the story. I found it

really interesting that she gave me this story because she told me she had never really told

anyone who gave her the information beside me, so I felt like at this point I had done a

good job gaining Dr. Buchanan’s trust.

10. Did you get any backlash about that story?

This was accidentally a loaded question. As soon as I asked this question I

immediately thought to myself, based on the answer she just gave asking about backlash

would not have been the best choice to phrase the question. I wanted to ask “Do you get

criticism for writing a story with quotes from an anonymous source?” But I feel my

question was not at all phrased correctly, because obviously the city council person

confided in her the information, so although it was controversial, it was more

controversial on his part than on her part, so I really phrased this probe incorrectly.

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However, Dr. Buchanan still answered it with poise as she told me that the worst

thing that happened was that someone broke the story before she did. Overall through

this story, I learned that although anonymous sources are not always ideal, sometimes

they are better than nothing especially if you know they are reliable. Although another

newspaper broke the story before she did, she made sure to be careful about how they

reported on the story.

11. Also going along with the legal things involved—

This was another situation where Dr. Buchanan interrupted the question before I

finished asking it, so perhaps in this sense it shows that I did not maintain complete

control of the interview as much as I could have. The problem could have been my lack

of experience or even just because I was so focused on trying to listen maybe I did not

have my priorities laid out properly. I think what I had been trying to ask was “Also

going along with the legal things involved with interviewing – could you tell me about

the different ethical dilemmas that come up during interviews in journalism.” It seems

like a lot of my questions in this interview I tried to instead of asking them as I wrote

them, I tried to rephrase them as a probe that would smoothly transition into a new

question.

She still managed to answer the question I intended to ask without even

completely articulating it. She talked about one pressure she had with the story about the

city councilman was being really worried about defaming him, and she also worried and

wondered what would happen if the story was not true. This I feel is definitely why I

wanted to ask about ethical dilemmas that related to the legal issues involved in

journalism because I wondered about how she dealt with ethical dilemmas, wondering if

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people were really giving her the right information and if she was worried about getting

in legal trouble. Even though I did not articulate the questions as perfectly as I would

have liked to she still did a great job at understanding the direction that I was going in

and providing with answers and also detailed examples which I really did appreciate.

She also delved into talking about dealing with a group she interviewed, the

Mohawk Warriors, who claimed that they were outside of the law that was applicable in

Canada (where Dr. Buchanan spent most of her time working as a journalist). This I feel

as a journalist would definitely put a person in an ethical dilemma and wonder if that

means they need to be treated a different way, but Dr. Buchanan said that despite this

comment they made, she still did all the legal things that she normally did so that she

would ensure that she was personally protected against libel suits. I thought this was

another great bit of information that Dr. Buchanan gave me and valuable information

really anyone could use when conducting an interview. When in doubt about handling a

situation, just maintain your usual protocol.

12. Has there ever been a situation where somebody you interviewed read the story

and claimed to be misquoted because they weren’t perceived the way they wanted to

be?

I think that in this point in the interview, I realized that there was not a lot of time

left, so I wanted to make sure that I got in as many questions that I needed answered, so I

am not sure that this was the smoothest of all transitions. Dr. Buchanan had just given

me some really interesting information about the Mohawk Warrior group, so looking

back on the interview, I feel like this moment would have been a good opportunity to

probe more on that particular incident and asked if she ever delved deeper into seeing if

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she handled the situation correctly, but I feel like I was just so in the moment that I was

not thinking of questions like that at the moment. One thing I realized especially in this

interview, it can be really difficult to maintain listening, noting what is important, and

trying to think of the next question and probe, so I can understand my own personal

struggle in this moment.

However with this question, she said that there was definitely times where people

have accused her that she misquoted them, but she felt that most of the time she has been

completely fair to all of her interviewees. One thing that she asked when people are

frustrated with how they were perceived in the interview and come to her is “Is there a

factual error?” and most of the time people will find that no, most of the information was

correct. In this case, I think that she has a good insight into protecting herself from

people and standing her own ground which is a good strategy and defense mechanism to

remember. However she said that even though she always felt she was fair, it is

important for a person to never assume that they are correct and really look into the

person’s accusation because you never know and there is a chance that journalists made a

mistake.

13. *hesitates*

In this moment of the information, I just was not ready to ask a question. I think

that she stopped answering the previous question sooner than I had expected her to, and

then once I realized it was time to come up with a question I could not remember what to

ask and I did apologize to her. She was really nice to me when she saw me struggling at

this part an looking for another question to ask and went into how one of the difficult

things about interviewing is that you only get so much time with the interviewee and you

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need to make sure that you get all your questions in. I think before this I was really

getting into asking questions naturally here, but at this point I just blanked on what I

would ask next. Perhaps in the future if I blanked, maybe I should have just owned my

silence for a bit longer as I tried to think of my next question, but I think where I was in

the wrong on this one, was I kind of allowed her to see me lose control whereas I

possibly could have prevented that.

14. And I guess as you have been in the business for so long, you have seen

journalism transform from print journalism to stuff on the media, so how has that

changed the way you interview and the approaches you use. We talked about how

there’s skype you can use and you find stuff on twitter, so how has that changed the

way you do interviews?

I think this was somewhat of a double-barreled question on my part. I could have

made it a bit more concise and gotten just right down to it, but I talked too much again

like I did with other questions previously. Dr. Buchanan still provided me with a very

good answer as she did talk about how now she has seen that there are so many more

approaches to interviewing that people can use. Previously, when people covered a story,

they had to be there in person, but now she has seen that is not even necessary anymore,

as people are able to cover a story in a completely different location and interview people

through things like skype. She explained the trouble with using technology, is that it

creates more complication with trying to verify a story. Here again, she gets into the

important job journalists have in using interviews to verify the story, so again, Dr.

Buchanan is doing a really good job in continuing to articulate her main message

throughout the interview.

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15. Do you think that’s why the in-person/on the phone interview can give you more

credibility than conducting an interview from Syria that you don’t really—

I did not get to finish my question again, so this could again show that I was

lacking in control of the interview, but Dr. Buchanan still managed to understand where I

was taking this question. One of the problems that she explained to me of using the

internet is that you have no evidence that the person is who they claim to be, so once

more Dr. Buchanan managed to present me with her message on the importance of

verifying your evidence in journalism through interviewing. In this sense, it is clear to

see how much experience she has in understanding what it takes for an interview to be

successful.

When doing interviews on the phone or in person, you can recognize a face and a

person to actually know that the person is who they claim to be, whereas you do not get

that on the internet. She then talked about how one of her former students did a talk

about this idea in a conference in Ottowa and she was so proud – with this bit of

information, I could have taken this as an opportunity to probe more about the question,

but my next question was somewhat unrelated, and I should have transitioned from this

answer to the next one a bit more smoothly.

16. Sometimes when you deal with interviews, sometimes you have the people that

will give you nothing and you have to keep probing, and you also have the more

talkative interviewees who are not going in the direction you are hoping. Then, I

guess, how do you redirect the interviews to people that are more talkative or keep

probing for people who give short answers.

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I think the reason that I again did not probe well here was because I was thinking

about how I really did not have a lot of time left, so I wanted to make sure that I got this

question answered. Here again, I think because maybe I was rushing, I, again, phrased

the question with too much words and it might have come across as a double-barreled

question.

Dr. Buchanan said that the main thing that she does to handle this problem is

establish control, and one method she used to establish control is by letting the

interviewee get the message that they want to talk about immediately with the first

question. This comment she made again makes me remember in her first answer how she

talked about how she felt interviewing was an important part of being a journalist because

it’s her job verify information, so this again makes me really feel that this was her big

message she was trying to get across through this interview. Another interesting thing

she told me, was a story about how she has become shameless in interrupting a person.

This I felt showed again how much confidence she has developed in interviewing people

over the years, because at this point, I feel a bit hesitant about interrupting an interviewee.

17. What piece of advice you have for any person going into journalism that wants

to get good at interviewing?

I closed the interview with this question because I felt it was a good way of

wrapping it up. Her answer to this question was actually interrupted as you can here on

the tape by another person that she had an appointment with. So I think that this moment

actually showed the importance of making sure that the schedule is followed and you end

the interview after 25 minutes like I said in the beginning. After the person interrupted

Dr. Buchanan and she talked to him, she sort of never finished answering the question,

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but I could see that she was busy with her next appointment so I thought it would not be

appropriate to ask her to finish answering the question. Instead, I led up to the closing of

the interview by using the clearinghouse probe and asking her if she had any more

information that she felt was important to add, but she did not have anymore.

Overall with the way that I asked the questions in this interview, I can see that I

really used the mirror probe a lot, to somewhat summarize what she was saying, and

ensure accuracy, so maybe I could have used a wider variety of probes. The closing of

my interview was a bit rushed because she knew that I had class, and she also had another

appointment so it was a bit quicker than I would have liked for it to be. I made sure to

express gratitude to her and thank her for doing the interview with me.

As we can see from my original question outline, I think I did a really good job at

sticking with the questions that I planned on using, but I think if I had to do it over again,

maybe I would have inquired more about how she creates a question schedule and ask her

more about if she sticks closed to asking the questions that she prepared. Other than that,

I was really happy with the questions despite my wordy and double-barreled tendencies.

b. Self-Analysis in Interview

As far as my own personal comfort level in the interview, I think I was for the

most part feeling okay with asking questions and feeling prepared. I think that one thing

that I noticed was I would sometimes get awkward and laugh at parts, or say “mmhmm”

or “oh!” “ya!” when she answered and maybe those came across as probes. That was a

way I think of me trying to show that I was comfortable and show that I was listening,

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but I do not think that those noises were always appropriate or necessary. There are parts

where I felt that silence from me could have been completely okay because making those

little comments came across as awkward.

I would say that I did maybe 30% of the talking, so as far as listening and making

sure I was not overly controlling the interview, I think that I did a good job making sure

that it was mostly the interviewee talking. Occasionally, I felt like Dr. Buchanan gave

really long answers and I could have signaled for her to wrap up her answer through my

body language, but in that sense I recognized that we had a difference of status so I did

not always feel comfortable asserting myself in this way. Obviously, I have provided an

audio to this interview, but as far as body language was concerned, I thought I did a good

job making I was making eye contact the entire time and making sure I was sitting

upright and paying attention.

One thing that I immediately realized, was that I had left my pen in my backpack,

and I had planned on taking notes, so at the beginning of the interview as Dr. Buchanan

was answering the question I realized that I did not have my pen and was wondering if I

should open my backpack and take out my pen to take notes, but I thought that would

have been rude and I did not want to make a scene, so I decided to just be attentive and

go without taking notes and I do not regret this quick decision that I had made. I thought

it was important that if I made a mistake to try and make sure that it was not too

noticeable.

For the most part, I think that the tone of my voice seemed confident and showed

that I was interested. In terms of the differences in this interview and the interview that I

did for my field project, I think that I felt more comfortable in this interview because I

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think Dr. Buchanan was really doing a great job giving me lots of information with the

questions that I asked. When I was the interviewer for the field project I felt that the

interviewee could have definitely elaborated on her answers more so it made it difficult

because I felt like I had to probe so much. With Dr. Buchanan, I felt like it was so easy

to get so much information about a variety of information because she gave such

elaborate detail in her examples and it was very informative.

Another difference with this one was that I was not interviewing Dr. Buchanan for

any sort of professional position so the questions that I asked her were less personable

and trying to get to understand her. Instead I was focused on trying to stay on the topic of

interviewing, so she did give a lot of her own personal examples of interviewing, but in

this project I did not need to ask about her work ethic or questions about her life and find

out why she was interested in the job. The employment interview I felt there was room

for such a wide array of questions, whereas this one I was focused on the topic of

interviewing in the career of journalism so it was definitely a lot more focused in terms of

the questions and I felt that made it easier to stay on the topic and it helped with the

transitioning and coming up with probing questions.

I did notice as soon as the interview started that one thing I found to be difficult

was just trying to listen and focus on what she was saying to come up with a probing

question. I felt especially overwhelmed at the beginning of the interview, but once I got

to about the third question I started getting the hang of listening but trying to come up

with the next question. Although I got the hang of listening to all her answers and

thinking up the next question, I still think it was the biggest struggle of the interview for

me. It was definitely clear to me when I got to the question where I just completely

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blanked on what to ask next. That was a learning moment for me because the

employment interview was only about six minutes long so there was not as much time

having to listen, whereas this interview was 25 minutes long, so it got challenging to

balance both listening to Dr. Buchanan speak and try to come up with what I would ask

her next. Once I typed up the transcript I was able to even see that there was information

that she talked about that I missed because my mind was kind of in two different places

trying to think of a question and be an active listener. That is definitely a skill that I think

I will need to grow with.

Again, I did definitely spend most of the time listening instead of talking during

this interview, but I felt satisfied with that because I was able to get so much information

out of her. Some of her answers were long and she did most of the talking, but I felt like

most of the information that she gave was valuable and throughout the entire interview

we did a good job in staying focused on the interview. I think the questions that I asked

for the most part did not show any sort of interview bias which again was good because

they were neutral. I feel like for the most part I did not try to lead her into any direction

when answering her question. She was able to listen to my questions and take the

question in whatever direction she chose, so I definitely think she was allowed enough

time to talk.

I definitely think that both Dr. Buchanan and I felt comfortable with each other

because the interview was in person, at John Carroll, and in her office in the

communication department. It was a familiar territory to both of us, so it was

comfortable and natural. Before the interview started and even after I stopped recording

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we continued to have small talks, so I think even though sometimes I fumbled with my

wording, I was pretty comfortable throughout the entire duration of the interview.

I would not change a whole lot during this interview, other than how I sometimes

say a lot of “mmhmm” and I would ramble when I would ask question. I think we did

have a really great interview and established some pretty good review. Dr. Buchanan

was so gracious and I am so glad I decided to interview her. Once I turned the record

button off she told me that she would be willing to continue to answer any of my

questions about journalism and help me figure anything out if I ever needed so I was very

grateful for that. I think maybe the biggest problem that I encountered was that one

moment when I hesitated and could not think of on the spot, but honestly listening to the

moment on the recording really did not sound as bad and awkward as I would have

expected it to. Obviously everyone makes mistakes and it was really nice that Dr.

Buchanan was so understanding of my moment of drawing a blank. In the future, I could

fix this just by gaining more experience and being more used to constantly needing to

come up with probing questions on the spot.

The part of the interview I am most pleased with is just how I was able to get

pretty much all the questions that I was wondering about answered. I think that made it a

huge success and I definitely think that I was very lucky to have interviewed Dr.

Buchanan who had so much experience interviewing that she was willing to share

information and take the time to answer. It was great to have an interviewee who really

did not need me to push her with probing which was one of the struggles with the

employment interview I did. It was hard interviewing a person who did not elaborate on

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the answer, so I feel like Dr. Buchanan’s answers really provided me with good

information and made it a bit easier on me.

I also think the format of my interview seemed to have gone smoothly. Perhaps

the interruption with the person coming into the office was awkward and kind of rushed

my conclusion, so in that case it definitely kind of rushed the finish of the interview. So

perhaps in the future I would be more ready to wrap on the interview quickly and try to

think how to transition into that a bit more smoothly. Maybe I could have even asked Dr.

Buchanan to finish answering the question about advice she would give to aspiring young

journalists, but the “feeler” part of me really did not want to push her in back into the

question when I knew that she had another appointment so I think I did make the best

possible choice. Another thing maybe I would have added, as I mentioned in the

question analysis, she definitely gave great examples that I could have probed more into

so I think toward the end I got a little less specific with my probing and started switching

topics quickly, so in the future maybe I would maintain to continue to stay focused on the

topic and probe based on the answers she was providing me with. Again, for the most

part I did do this, but I feel like toward the end I was rushing to make sure I got all of my

questions out there. The most important thing that I personally would need to change

was the phrasing of my questions.

In conclusion, I was very satisfied with this interview and thought that I did do

well. It has continued to grow my interest in the field of journalism so I could not be

more happy that I interviewed Dr. Buchanan. I have written her a thank you note that I

plan on putting in her mailbox in the communication department so that she will be able

to see that I did not just express my gratitude after the interview and through email, but I

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want her to know that the help she provided me with for this interview was incredibly

beneficial and I felt that it helped me learn even more about interviewing and it even

elaborated on concepts we learned in this class which was really interesting.

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