Speech Article: Happiness, Excitement, and Fulfillment of being a Journalist

COMM 260 Week 4 Lab Notes

 Interviewing is about getting the key information that you need to fill out the 5 Ws and How of story while also building trust with your source. Think of it as a conversation with another person in which your goal is to try to get more information.

Types of Interviews:

 Close ended questions: This where you ask a question that a person can answer with a yes or no, without elaborating. They are good for getting a straightforward answer.

 For example:

Question “Did you see anything in the room?” 

Answer: “Yes.”

 Close ended questions don’t really allow you to get the interesting details you need for your story. They work well when you just need to confirm or deny a fact and have a limited time to ask the questions. But they can be boring for the person being interviewed. They don’t allow you to build a relationship with your source and you can’t usually use the answer as a direct quote in the story.

Open ended questions: This is where you ask a question that requires a person to give an extended response by making them tell a story of what happened. It can help you create a scene.

For Example:

Question: “What did you see in the room?”

Answer: “There were lots of people dancing, bright lights and tons of food on the table.”

Open ended questions allow you to pick up on the voice and vocabulary of the person speaking, provides richer details that you can use to enhance your writing, opens the door for new questions that you may not have thought to ask originally and allows for more conversation between interviewer and interviewee. The downside is that the source could take the conversation into another direction with too much irrelevant detail so an interviewer must politely retain control of the interview.

Important Note-Taking Tips:

Always make sure you ask the correct spelling of a source’s name, their title or position, their age and jot down the date of the interview. Another helpful tip is to put a star in your notes next to any key quotes or information that the person you are interviewing shares. This helps you later as you go through your notes to pinpoint information or quotes that you really want to use in your story. t

NEVER put words in a person’s mouth by suggesting they say something in a certain way

NEVER pay or offer any service or goods for an interview

NEVER make up an interview with a source or make up a quote someone didn’t say

Writing do’s and don’t’s

● Do write in a simple, direct way. Stay away from convoluted sentences and fancy words. Just tell people what happened.

● Don’t sprinkle qualifiers (adjectives and adverbs) throughout your text. They often smuggle opinions into your news story.

● Don’t use more words than necessary to communicate an idea. Don’t repeat yourself.

● Don’t tell people that someone was “heroic”; tell an anecdote that shows exactly how “heroic” he was.

● Don’t use the first person in a news story. Only use the “I” in a feature if your story is highly relevant in that context.

● Don’t fall in love with your own writing. Cut sentences and paragraphs mercilessly when necessary.

● Do include direct quotes in every story.