ban e-mail "interviews"

off topic by "email interviews" should be banned

― gr8080, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 8:58 PM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

why?

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:06 PM (15 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i mean surprise surprise no one is paying me $$ to pick up & fly across the country to interview unknown rappers like roach gigz but if u want to buy me a couple tixx i can stop in HI on the way back & watch yr dog lol

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:07 PM (14 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

no one uses a phone anymore? i pay $120 a month for mine.

― gr8080, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:10 PM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i dont really see the advantage of a phone over email tbh. its not like the guys im talking to are getting censored by their agents or something afai can tell.

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:14 PM (7 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i see numerous disadvantages -- including some ive had to deal w/ that include tapes not recording properly, volume being too low, danger of mistranscription, the pain in the ass of transcription, etc

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:15 PM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i guess you lose the element of 'natural conversation' to it. im sure interviewees love it for being able to allow for nuance etc

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:20 PM (1 minute ago) Bookmark

i guess i have stupid beef w/ them being called "interviews" when they should be "i had a chance to email back and forth with so and so about their upcoming album"

the worst are ones where you can tell the interview subject was just sent a list of questions to answer, no back and forth at all.

as a reader, i enjoy a transcribed verbal conversation (whether it was done in person or over the phone) a lot more than something i can tell was typed out in an email correspondence, giving the subject time to carefully edit what they're giving the journalist

Fuck you, pay me

i'm all for journalists getting paid, but it just amazes me that email correspondence passes for an interview now when recording a phone conversation is easier than making a sandwich

yeah, i should say that im not in favor of email interviews replacing other forms. I do like that email correspondence allows the interviewee to think about their answers. i mean, when I'm emailing someone (partic. someone who isn't well known, isn't dealing with handlers filtering their content etc) I tend to ask a lot of music-nerd questions, i.e. favorite album at a certain time in their life / fav producers/detail oriented ish that i like to give a chance for the interviewee to provide the kind of detail that they might not be able to off the top of their head

otoh, obv part of it is that transcribing is a pain in the ass

i'm all for journalists getting paid, but it just amazes me that email correspondence passes for an interview now when recording a phone conversation is easier than making a sandwich

― gr8080, Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:27 PM (22 seconds ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

transcribing phone interviews really much more difficult than making a sandwich

Transcribing is v time consuming iirc and i rc

depends on the sandwich

i once got into a fight with an editor when he wanted to publish an e-mail interview with a blurb saying "we sat down with..."

he insisted "sat down with" was a figure of speech. i insisted it was misleading and i made him take it out.

i mean, theres totally something lost for sure ... the dynamics of actual conversation. but i feel like so much of that is really lost via phone vs. in person anyway

the one interview I ever did (Jon Oliva of Savatage), the recording didn't work and I didn't feel comfortable using what I roughly sketched during teh interview, so I lost the opportunity to run it...

fair enough point re: transcription. but hard work never etc etc

i guess my feelings are twofold:

1) an actual conversation is way more interesting to read
2) interesting stuff can come from an e-mail correspondence but i feel like its irresponsible to present it to readers as something other than and email correspondence or, even worse, "i sent so and so a list of questions and here's how they responded"

Last week I was set to interview a local musician face to face -- tight schedules on both our ends so if this didn't happen we couldn't schedule a make up time due to my deadline. Unfortunately it did fall through so I went e-mail and got the questions and answers together and in before my deadline. Situations like that make me damn glad e-mail interviews exist as an option.

I'm also thinking of long, extended interviews I did with artists like Ilyas Ahmed which could only have been done easily via e-mail interview at the time given all the time it took, but which did contain a lot of back and forth, me asking followup questions and so forth.

And yeah, ultimately transcribing is the devil.

i'm not a journalist and never have been but how is this not a huge topic of debate in journalism now?

i once got into a fight with an editor when he wanted to publish an e-mail interview with a blurb saying "we sat down with..."

he insisted "sat down with" was a figure of speech. i insisted it was misleading and i made him take it out.

― PWN: The Paul Winfield Network (get bent), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 6:29 PM (2 minutes ago) Bookmark

i feel like this has to happen a lot, right? and a lot of times the journalist in jody's shoes doesn't win?

i find it really difficult to connect with & have an 'actual conversation' with a stranger over the telephone, to be totally honest. You lose all the visual cues that make irl conversation possible. It can easily be as stilted & weird as an emailed one, in my experience

& even then, if you're interviewing a dude in person who is sticking to a script its frustrating to try to get him to break out of it, never really feels like much of a convo anyway

i realize thats kind of a red herring, obv all things being equal in person is the best

ned- did you disclose that it was conducted via email?

i mean i guess this is just me thinking THERE ARE RULES AND YOU ARE BREAKING THEM every time i read a blog/magazine

thread police syndrome

Story hasn't run yet but I can't recall what I put in the draft offhand. (Had to crunch through a lot of work at the time and it's a bit of a blur already, but I've got it around here somewhere...)

some of the best interviews I've done have been email interviews. I mean, it depends on the person -- some people might be better in conversation, some might be better over email. i think i've usually said in the intro if it was an emailer or w/e.

its not like email interviews inherently produce boring or dishonest copy or anything,

i guess more than anything i'm amazed (as someone who's never been a journalist) that its not standard practice to at least disclose that what you're printing was done via email. like as in a code of ethics kind of way!

"This conversation with gr8080 was not done over beers at a shore club near Pearl Harbor. Pity."

also personally the few times i've been interviewed i've felt kind of weird doing it via email, a little better doing it over IM, and the best when done over the phone. but thats just me i guess.

part of it actually is harder to do via email, cuz its so easy for music dudes to want to just rattle off quick answers. it takes longer than a conversation! so a lot of times i find i need to do follow-up questions to get them to open up a bit more

(roach gigz was actually an exception to this)

the art of the phone interview cannot be denied
i almost never do email interviews (though as follow-up for clarification, yes) - i think i've done one in the past 3 years. phone and in-person (obv whenever possible as this is the best) over lame-ass email interviews any time. phone is actually kind of great for me b/c i usually type as we're talking and therefore eliminate the terrible pain of transcribing (oh it sucks gaah)
i like conversational interviews though, not straight q&a, i mean, you never know where they might end up.

thank you rrrobyn for making me not feel crazy

i type really fast but i cant even imagine transcribing straight thru the interview! i think im thinking too much while doing them

i find it really difficult to connect with & have an 'actual conversation' with a stranger over the telephone, to be totally honest. You lose all the visual cues that make irl conversation possible. It can easily be as stilted & weird as an emailed one, in my experience

― *gets the power* (deej), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 8:36 PM (11 minutes ago) Bookmark

i've rarely interviewed anyone, but based on my limited experience, deej otm. telephone interviews can be painfully awkward (and yeah, transcription is a drag). maybe the answer here will depend on your level of general social anxiety.

The *worst* thing about email interviews is when the publication includes the interviewee's emoticons in the interview transcript.

Abbott otm ;-)

telephone interviews can be painfully awkward (and yeah, transcription is a drag). maybe the answer here will depend on your level of general social anxiety.

i feel this but obv is going to differ greatly from interviewer to interviewer and interviewee to interviewee

lol abbott

re: "awkwardness" in phone interviews - this is called doing your job

make the conversation happen

but back to my other point: am i crazy for thinking its crazy that journalism does not have a principled standard disclosing the medium that something being presented as an interview was conducted via?

no, that does seem odd.

even the awkward/bad interviews i've experienced had decent material in them!

i really don't think that journalism should be reduced to fucking email interviews
it's been reduced enough already ffs

xp
it depends...

when you hear an interview on NPR that is not done over the phone, they ALWAYS tell you if the interviewee is present in the same studio or sitting in a different studio in a different part of the world. why doesn't print journalism do this?

i really don't think that journalism should be reduced to fucking email interviews
it's been reduced enough already ffs

ive been "interviewed" more than once by just being emailed a questionnaire to fill out, no back and forth, no follow-up. its a bummer! nb: these were for minor blogs/publications, but ones that sell ads etc

interviewer & interviewee should be making love or else not genuine

xps
i mean it depends on the publication, usually...
sometimes it's implied in the writing of the piece itself, of course, but if that's not clear, something added like "on a press day", "in conversation with", etc. With an email interview, it's tough, because few publications want to declare that necessarily - though online publications are often more okay with it. If it's for a short piece, not a big deal, i figure. but for a longer piece, especially if it's a profile (and that's a case where i'm just like, get on the freakin phone already!), i think it needs to be declared. of course, if you have a conversation on the phone/in person, and then follow up with email clarification, then you don't have to declare the email medium (unless the email answers are massive and/or different than phone answers)

print journalists are craftier than radio journalists
xp

there is obv great charm in a barely edited live interview & if anywhere that's where the art of the interviewer comes in in a major way, getting the interviewee to open up, loosen their lips, etc. also i agree it is dishonest & lame not to mention it if it's an email. but i also like reading ppl express themselves through thought-out text a lot, and i think that it's valuable and i disagree that the results are bad or stilted or w/e, or that a journalist is lazy for doing it that way

In an era where you've got Skype video interviews and e-mail cut and paste and any number of things in between, ultimately I see it all as an expansion of the tools of the trade, and therefore the writer's palette (as it were). Right now I'm engaged in what's turning into a potentially pretty fascinating project involving another, long deceased area figure and what I thought would be a few individual conversations either online somehow or maybe via e-mail is turning into a big get-together involving at least eight people and, it seems, a film crew. Ultimately, really, whatever works.

i like to know if the person being interviewed is eating truffle-oil french fries or not

in email it's just so easy for people to get away with not really explaining themselves/their work! like, you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?" and then you actually get the real, interesting answer!

you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?"

Depends on whether or not you follow up on that, though. Referring to my initial examples above -- didn't have space for that in the short local piece as mentioned, it was essentially a one-shot. But the Ilyas Ahmed interview had a lot of back and forth that grew out of his initial answers, pursuing observations in more detail, etc.

i hate transcribing so much

i also hate talking on the phone

ultimately I see it all as an expansion of the tools of the trade, and therefore the writer's palette (as it were).

right i feel this, and despite my baiting thread title, i mostly agree. my bigger issue is that its not common practice to disclose it the way NPR tells me if terry gross is face to face w/ someone or just hearing them in her headphones.

in email it's just so easy for people to get away with not really explaining themselves/their work! like, you're not there to say "could you explain that a bit more?" and then you actually get the real, interesting answer!

TOTALLY this gets back to my fist point/frustration as a reader. But I feel like the inverse is true as well, that an interviewee can have time to carefully select their words and i end up getting a well-edited artist statement not an "interview".

everyone hates transcribing

my fist point

I can see this.

haha

the way NPR tells me if terry gross is face to face w/ someone or just hearing them in her headphones

Terry Gross is from what I can tell mostly listening to elfin ghosts in her skull.

Ned i love that we've spent more time on this thread together that any other recent thread considering: http://www.ilxor.com/ILX/ThreadSelectedControllerServlet?showall=true&bookmarkedmessageid=107&boardid=63&threadid=703

i see ned's point - and it really depends on who you're interviewing and what it's for - like, if it's for a big project or a book, then obv you're going to have some email correspondence. and certainly if the person in question has passed away, you're going to go on a search for other sources. all of which would be declared rather than be passed off as direct interviews though.
i'm all for more tools of the trade, for sure, but to write an original article for publication, you really want to have original conversations with the subjects of that article. there's an excitement and surprise in conversations that isn't found in most email 'interviews', and i think that translates into the final article.

xpost -- Remember the past. (And the still angry Manics fans, at least I assume they're still angry.)

i'm also not talking primarily about music journalism though, which is it's own special hell

xpost:
getting a notification from YouTube that a new comment has been posted on that video never fails to make my day slightly better

Allegedly there's a couple of Dylan fans in Austin who are still pissed off over some of my thoughts as well. C'est la vie.

i'm also not talking primarily about music journalism though, which is it's own special hell

I'm now perversely comforted by all the PR announcements I receive daily. The interchangeability is almost lulling.

music pr is the most painful pr

NPR tells me if terry gross is face to face w/ someone or just hearing them in her headphones.

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:19 AM (12 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

factoid: terry gross is never face to face w/her subjects, if theyre in the same building theyre in another studio, it her thing iirc

"With their stunning new album the so-and-so's reinvent their cultlike status into a broader acceptance of their inverting of past standards and futuristic beat science of riffs."

anyway, i say all this as someone who was outright terrified of doing interviews when i was 19 - and the option of email then didn't really exist (people were still getting used to it, lol), so i had to put on a brave face and talk to people. fake it til you make it. the truth is: most real interviews are exciting and interesting for all involved! who knew

Eh I'd put mine at about 1/3 exciting etc., 1/3 neutral, 1/3 'you are my twentieth interviewer today and I already hate you' 'uh...so tell me what your new album is like'

re: "awkwardness" in phone interviews - this is called doing your job

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:58 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

make the conversation happen

― obliquity of the ecliptic (rrrobyn), Tuesday, January 18, 2011 10:58 PM (39 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

um, i dont know what contenderizer meant about social anxiety, because thats not really my issue with phone interviews, its more about dealing w/ people who are sticking to scripts as is ... this happens a bunch in i imagine all forms of journalism? in person, there's something to talk about -- grady was joking, but, like, truffle fries! for real! when i interviewed gorilla zoe dude ate like 3 sandwiches or something iirc & that detail went into the interview, since he was straying from the "just gotta keep hustling" script not at all (i did get him to talk about his first tapes but that was about as interesting as it got)

phone makes it way way way harder to pick at those kinds of details. i dunno, maybe i also just hate talking on the phone like max. it doesnt feel any more 'unnatural' to me than email at some level -- in a different way, sure, but its still a really disconnected 'dialogue' imo

i guess email doesnt really move away from a script either if thats the issue, but my point was more about the actual details of your interaction with them -- the way they move / what they do / their tics etc -- can make it into the work. that stuff is all lost over the phone anyway

yeah but then its lost even more via email isnt it?

i dont know what contenderizer meant about social anxiety, because thats not really my issue with phone interviews

was mostly a joke

you can hear someone eating a sandwich over the phone

in email it wouldnt even come up

"so what are you doing right now"

"sitting in front of my computer"

yeah i just mean that compared w/ the gulf between in-person interaction, where you get to *know* the person, is a much bigger one, so phone or email it feels like you lose some / either way, just in slightly different ways

um, another thing is that until skype i had no way to record stuff over a cell phone, which is the only phone line i have

so there were practical issues

i mean i still have tapes from when i did phone interviews back when i was 19 & record to a land line.

maybe i just feel like the phone interview is such a halfway pt between 'emailed correspondence' & 'in person discussion' that it feels like a compromise of both or something idk ive been sorta thinking this through as i go along tbh

in email interviews you can *flounce off* without actually, physically flouncing off

Pervert.

in case it wasnt clear i agree w/ grady that the medium of the interview should be revealed yes

ELEPHANT IN THE ROOM: Journalists have a descipable reputation and folks realize this and try to limit communication to the most discretionary form possible.

despicable!

Sufferin succotash.

fwiw if i had to choose someone to interview/write a profile on me/ someone I represented based on this thread I'd pick rrrobyn

yeah dude we got it

everyone hates transcribing

I kinda like it...?

You sick fuck.

I hope this is how Ned responds to questions in his email interviews.

I mean, don't get me wrong, it can be super-tedious (and I haven't done it for years), but I like paying attention to the way people speak.

yeah if you journalists hate hard work so much maybe you should become sandwich artists or something idk

I did, but I was told I didn't chop the mayonnaise properly.

yeah if you journalists hate hard work so much maybe you should become sandwich artists or something idk

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 12:32 AM (3 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

lol i think u are assuming im getting paid for this stuff

sorry deej, I was addressing the *professional* journalists on this thread

lol yah just bein defensive

pfork doesn't pay?

i write reviews for them

In 1993 or so, our magazine did a Future Sound of London feature over email because OMG THE COMING TECH REVOLUTION, but obviously we 'sold' it as such to the reader and included emoticons, etc in the text (our creative director claims to have invented the emoticon back in the days of Letraset). Then we have these heavy-visual issues where subjects fill in the exact same questionnaire, which are nightmarish to chase and collect once sent and completely anodyne in the hands of models or over-packaged performing artists - when we do them, I can surmise that some fucker has spent the features budget, basically.

Mostly I'm writing 2000+ word features about a single individual, so I'm forever having to tell PRs things like 'no, a phoner is completely unacceptable, we need something a bit more uh interactive for a story of this size' UGH THE WORD 'PHONER' but I will do it if, say, the subject is on another continent. I don't do email interviews and will only do follow-up questions via email direct to the subject. Today, most methods presented to journalists as being terribly convenient ways of covering a subject are thinly disguised methods for PRs to control the process. I often feel like doing a Journalism 101 chat with publicists trying to 'manage' me or my colleagues beyond what I consider appropriate, or whose remit seems to include sitting in on the interview - it makes me feel rude/uncomfortable to have someone present who is not in the conversation or is there to silently curb invasive questions I'd normally blame my editor for making me ask. I often mention the editorial assistant we sacked for sending copy on to a gallery publicist before publication, which shuts 95 per cent of PRs the hell up when they ask to 'check facts' before the piece is published.

if transcribing phone conversations bugs you put it up on Amazon MTurk, some Indian/Dutch/Eastern European idiot will do it for 1 dollar per 5 minutes of audio (or less!)

I hate transcription but I won't let anyone else touch my recordings. I've been gearing up to a 90 minute interview transcription for about two weeks and am dreading it.

email interviews surely only good for small puff pieces that don't go into depth - the kind of featurette where all you need out of the artist is basic info & opinions. for anything remotely substantial they're inadequate. a good interview isn't a list of questions, it's a conversation where you bounce ideas and react to what the interviewee says. i guess you could do back-and-forth emails but i don't trust anyone to respond in a timely manner and i don't want to be sitting around waiting for someone to get back to me when, in person, the entire exchange could take 15 minutes.

and that's before you get into what suzy describes, where the "email interview" is just an opportunity to give PR-led non-answers.

transcription is actual hell but like suzy you mostly should do it yourself because picking up on the nuances of the conversation is pretty valuable to writing the piece.

phone/skype interviews are nowhere near ideal either, there's that distance and awkwardness, and as an interviewer i tend to want to feel vaguely in control and relaxed, which i can't do if i have to shout "hello? HELLO? can you hear me?" every few minutes. but obviously sometimes you gotta do what you gotta do.

Is Google Voice practical for transcribing interviews yet? Not available in UK afaik. These days tbh I am kinda glad when people offer email rather than phoner, especially if it's just for a three-question review sidebar because a) no transcription b) no endless rescheduling of calls across timezones c) no clearing your evening to wait by the phone for a phone call that never comes (I'm looking at YOU Mr Lou Reed) d) no dealing with the interviewee's shitty mobile reception/inability to speak into the phone e) no dealing with shitty phone recording devices not recording properly... BUT... they always turn out terrible, you can't press people to be more specific, no conversational "vibe" or w/e.

Half the time the PR is just trying to Be Important so they can talk about how they liaised or actioned or otherwise verbed a noun in their report to their boss, so it's not altogether inappropriate for me to hit them back with 20 years of doing it my way. My friend spent virtually all of last week dealing with obtuse fashion PRs and their on-again, off-again subject and finally told them to GTFO on a Saturday afternoon because he was that sick of playing hurry up and wait. For those short things, 10 minutes on the phone is perfectly adequate - I never do a full transcript for a very short piece because it's easy to go in and find the whopperquote you're going to use, check the facts they gave you and write around both with something resembling your own opinion and reaction to what's said. Bingo, 500 words in 20 minutes! I can talk the back legs off a donkey on the phone, and get some amazing responses that way - Liv Tyler stoner conversation, I'm looking at YOU - as long as there's an unmediated one-on-one conversation as base material for my work, I'm good. I did a great phone chat with Machine Florence last year, but we have some friends in common and she wanted to talk about her American side, so that worked well under the circs.

Other classic responses to control freaks: 'a lot of people are concerned that your client sounds a bit over-managed in the pieces we've seen, I know she's more spontaneous/fun than that, so we thought it would be more interesting to the reader to shake things up a bit' or, if things get serious, 'if you really want to sit in this interview, I have no choice but to say in the feature that you didn't want to leave your subject alone with a writer and that is never flattering'. I have been known to invoke the reader's interest A LOT in service to appearing more self-effacing than I actually am.

rrrobyn and suzy otm

in person >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> phone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> email

like, if that person lives in your town there is no reason not to do it in person

i've never really minded a PR person sitting in on an interview, though every time that's actually happened they've been unobtrusive, haven't interrupted and i haven't felt inhibited.

i don't even do full transcripts for longer pieces! get yr quotes, type whatever notes that come to mind, jot down times of exchanges you might need to go back to, fin.

i never knew that terry gross doesn't sit in the same room as her interviewees, wtf?? very strange

I did one the other day. Sent some questions on a tight deadline, ended up with single sentence or two word replies.

in person >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> phone >>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>>> email

― progressive cuts (Tracer Hand), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 6:30 AM (51 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

i think this should really go without saying, but ppl in this thread are defending email interviews because a lot of times they happen and there's no way around it. I do them all the time, but because they're exponentially easier; not because they're better

i think the most important part of interviewing is getting interesting stories out of dull people, and finessing that is impossible over email.

What Whiney said. Also, I can't imagine this problem is unique to me but artists are sometimes really terrible at answering my questions (on phone or over the email) and so I have to keep asking the same question over and over again in different words until they actually answer it. You can't just fill an email with the same question written differently 10 times. Or you can, but then you can't be surprised when the artist just copy/pastes their (not helpful) answer 10 times.

yeah you def have to approach questions from different angles a lot of the time. i'd disagree that email interviews are necessary - follow-up questions apart, i've only had to do email interviews for one piece, which was sheer bad timing rather than anyone's request (last-minute commission when i was out of town for 3 weeks on another job) - given the nature of it (the artists weren't the focus of the piece) it should've been (and was) fine, but even then it was frustrating not being able to ask for clarifications &c. other than that i've never had to do an email interview.

(and like suzy would not accept a request for one without protesting)

they're pretty necessary for me, timewise

gr80 otm

i don't care if you call it a "Q&A" but calling it an interview implies spontaneous dialogue

a lot of the interviews I ran back in the fanzine days were conducted via mail that's right the US postal service bub

we never ran a disclaimer, it was pretty clear which were live and which weren't

then again I never edited my live interviews (I thought that was the true sin of interviewing - paraphrasing the voice out of a subject)

tbh I think this stuff self-regulates itself, a publication that runs 100% email interviews is not gonna be a very interesting read

i think we've all pretty much agreed that in person >>> anything else

but im really curious that no one sees any advantages -- other than how much easier it is -- to email over phone interviews (technological failings of phone interviews aside, even). i mean, i totally get where suzy is coming from w/ PR people but im thinking more w/ less-known / stage managed interviewees, and the possible advantages of email for conveying an interviewees ideas. does no one else think something might be gained even if the conversational dynamic is lost?

i've had publicists tell me that they've literally done email interviews FOR their artists, so that's one other glaring disadvantage

A couple years ago I had terrible cell phone coverage and no accessible landline and I swear I lost 50% of my interviews in the middle of the interview and had to call them back. Very few things are more awkward than that.

xxpost -- It can certainly depend on the artist -- and in my experience there are some folks who are extremely restrained and/or shy in person who are much more communicative via the written word. I realize via some of the posts up above that some may see that as a challenge to overcome in person and all but that doesn't drive me much. (And then again this isn't my fulltime job anyway.)

i've had publicists tell me that they've literally done email interviews FOR their artists, so that's one other glaring disadvantage

"That's odd, all the answers have bullet points and superlatives."

i still think one of the smartest things a freelancer can do is write-off a landline.

cant google just dial phones now anyway

\o_o/

does no one else think something might be gained even if the conversational dynamic is lost?

worth mentioning Samuel Delany here -- at some point he started insisting on written interviews so he could put his thoughts exactly the way he wanted them.

can't google just interview roach gigz 4 me

the possible advantages of email for conveying an interviewees ideas. does no one else think something might be gained even if the conversational dynamic is lost?

even when i've been interviewing people who are fantastic at expressing themselves in writing, what it still lacks is the opportunity to dig deeper and explore what they've said - to say "hold up, can you explain what you meant there" or "can you explore that thought a bit more" - which means their answers can be pat and uninsightful, even if they're smart and expressed well, because they're not being challenged on anything they're saying or being required to interrogate what they think.

also the point of an interview is that i steer the conversation - if you just want an artist's point of view, expressed well, get them to write the piece themselves and leave me out of it.

I swear I lost 50% of my interviews in the middle of the interview and had to call them back. Very few things are more awkward than that.

one of which is realizing your recorder has been off the entire time, and telling them you're going to have to do the whole thing over again

protip: listen back to a bit of your interview before leaving the scene of the crime :(

does no one else think something might be gained even if the conversational dynamic is lost?

i guess, if they're really good and honest writers? imo it's really what rrrobyn said - good quotes come when you see someone get excited about something but they don't quite know how to put it, so they drop it. then you ask them to say more. and then they usually deliver. it's the most inarticulate moments that are the most interesting because it means they've pushed up against the limits of their thinking. if you can spot this, you can get them to surprise themselves and that's always interesting to read. in an email they're probably not going to go there - they're probably going to stick to things they feel confident about.

haha xpost mind-meld

http://www.tv-am.org.uk/uploadedfiles/davidfrost.jpg

can't google just interview roach gigz 4 me

― post-rock was most definitely the future of post-rock (Edward III), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 9:34 AM (6 minutes ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

my pt was about not needing to pay for a landline at all, i dont get this?

good quotes come when you see someone get excited about something but they don't quite know how to put it, so they drop it. then you ask them to say more. and then they usually deliver

I said this before but I will say this again -- THIS CAN HAPPEN IN THE WRITTEN MEDIUM AS WELL. Pat or undeveloped answers can be addressed in e-mail if you respond back asking for more information. If an e-mail interview is a brief one-off then you might not have that chance, I agree, but if there is an exchange going on, then the opportunities abound.

Xpost I think it was a "joke"

Believe me, I'm sympathetic to the points being made but I honestly wonder how many of the people holding onto that point as being somehow unique to the spoken/face-to-face interview have ever tried doing similar via e-mail, or even e-mail followups to face-to-face interviews, say. It's not that hard!

it's the most inarticulate moments that are the most interesting

otm - the best quotes aren't necessarily the perfectly-expressed shit but the ums and ers and spontaneous reactions and conversational nuances that actually express personality, not just thoughts.

one of which is realizing your recorder has been off the entire time, and telling them you're going to have to do the whole thing over again

have heard so many nightmare stories along these lines, only have one myself - after interviewing ikonika in ten ten tei, i got the tube home and settled down to transcribe and MY DICTAPHONE IT WAS NOT THERE. neither was it back at the restaurant - it must have fallen out of my bag on the way home. i'm so lucky i know sara, and could just phone her up and ask to redo w/no problems - and it turned out better, because she'd had time to think a bit more about her answers by then.

i mean the practical realities of working 60 hrs a week means that unless dudes are willing to do weekend or evening interviews im not gonna be getting anyone on the phone in the near future regardless so i guess part of me here is just defending my right to create worthwhile content from a disadvantaged position :-/

If an e-mail interview is a brief one-off then you might not have that chance, I agree, but if there is an exchange going on

yeah, i've never been offered an exchange and can't envisage it at all! most artists (and PRs) aren't willing to commit to multiple emails w/no specified end point (and i'm not willing to sit around waiting for them to get back to me without knowing when this will be).

when i had a proper job i managed to either schedule interviews in my lunch hour*, or book half days off work - luckily i could do this at short notice.

*this ploy fell down with solange, who turned up 1.5hrs late to our lunch interview

xpost -- Which I think will always be a key point of difference. If you can afford to work on something in a more leisurely fashion (and often I can), the advantages and possibilities are more apparent, perhaps.

I said this before but I will say this again -- THIS CAN HAPPEN IN THE WRITTEN MEDIUM AS WELL. Pat or undeveloped answers can be addressed in e-mail if you respond back asking for more information.

i guess what i'm saying ned is that the most interesting avenues might not present themselves at all -- pat, undeveloped or otherwise -- because when people write they write "clearly" or at least try to, and if they can't express something clearly then they often won't even attempt it -- so you'll never know -- it's the tree that didn't fall in the forest, or something.

deej surely even deejsters must eat lunch some time

i get a half hour lunch that i have to clock out for. i work in a suburban office that i commute to using public transportation that is about 1.5 hrs from my home. i have a cell phone & no private offices -- having conversations w/ musicians at my desk simply isnt feasible -- u can trust me on this lol

i dont really want to make this thread about my hardships, tho

(bcuz really the issue is that i need a new job)

"Can I talk to Deej about this e-mail?"
"Ah no, he's eating his lunch and talking to Lou Reed over there..."

this might be the thread to ask: is there any good way of recording a mobile phone call on a normal, unhacked mobile phone?

i used the office boardroom (and handy speakerphone) for phoners sometimes, when i did girls aloud my colleagues kept trying to accidentally walk in on it :(

tracer, i have something similar to this - does the job perfectly. you can get them in the tottenham ct road electronic shops

ah cool i have something similar except it doesn't work with my phone for some reason

Reiterating some points already made and reiterated, but I do lots of interviews so my thoughts:

-- In-person interviews are almost always the best way to talk to anyone (which I don't think anyone is arguing with);
-- The major weakness of e-mail interviews is the difficulty of having a real conversation. You can go back and forth, like Ned says, and follow up on things, but it's all so much more involved and less likely to lead in unexpected directions than a verbal conversation is.
-- But I like e-mail for follow-up questions to an in-person or phone interview, it's great just for clarifying something. I also like it when I know what the answer's already going to be (like "no comment") but just need it officially stated.
-- I always try to specify the form of any conversation, whether it was in person, by phone, e-mail, a comment issued by a representative, or whatever. I just think that helps provide clarity for the reader, and I don't want to create any false impressions.

All that said, I've read some very entertaining or interesting e-mail interviews. If you happen to be "talking" to someone who's a good or funny writer, it's sort of like getting someone to write your article for you. (I mean, you still have to edit it, clean it up, etc. -- but they're sort of doing the heavy lifting.) Which maybe is lazy, but if the end result is something the reader likes, who cares? Also, I think in doing e-mail interviews it's completely fine to clean up spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc. God knows we all clean up people's spoken words.

if the end result is something the reader likes, who cares?

Can't be reiterated enough.

ha

well i think i more or less agree w/ the people ive been arguing w/ at this pt, although im not entirely sure that allowing the interviewee to think through & write out their answers doesnt have its own appealing qualities, i will concede that the pts made upthread about follow-up on unarticulated ideas is def a big thing lost when it's no longer a live conversation.

also the point of an interview is that i steer the conversation - if you just want an artist's point of view, expressed well, get them to write the piece themselves and leave me out of it.

― lex diamonds (lex pretend), Wednesday, January 19, 2011 5:38 AM (6 hours ago) Bookmark

as a reader and not a journalist i want to say lex is so OTM here

What if the journalist just wants to ask questions you've heard the subject answer eight million times?

that's a question of the quality of the journalist not the medium imo

John Waters always said something along the lines of "I may have heard that question a million times, but that person never asked me this before."

Re: Recording cell phone interviews - I do 'em from home, so I just put the phone on speaker and prop the recording device (Olympus DM-20, cheap, reliable and sturdy) next to it.

I don't like doing in-person interviews; I freeze up and can't make the jump to casual/conversational, so it always feels like I'm taking their deposition. I'm a much better interviewer on the phone, and believe I've consistently gotten better answers from my subjects that way.

-- I always try to specify the form of any conversation, whether it was in person, by phone, e-mail, a comment issued by a representative, or whatever. I just think that helps provide clarity for the reader, and I don't want to create any false impressions.

why isn't this standard practice

LOL, judging by the amount of pissed-off journalists having to pad out features with their professional ego damage at being offered a 'phoner' for a cover story, because subject is boring so why not go meta, one might think standard practice would take care of itself.

If I'm not writing cultural commentary through a veil of edgy style whatever, I'm doing interview features. This month's is an ace French design guru I interviewed in Paris before Christmas. Dude was, I discovered after asking for the interview, actually fairly obsessive about my publication and the PR was bend-over-backwards helpful in arranging it. I allowed the PR to hang out with us over the interview because a) my French is teh suck and designer needed occasional vocab help as PR had better English b) PR worked for the designer and not some big corporate doo-dah and c) nevertheless I have learned that it is probably good practice to suddenly become thirsty so PR has to be menial and in the kitchen even though every fiber of their being wants to be observing instead. Anyway, very rare exception to my normal rule.

I had a job interviewing ppl in highly technical positions about shit I knew nothing about save for the research that I had done so email interviews were way preferable because I wouldn't really embarrass myself that much

also they preferred it because their publicists would rewrite everything

i guess if i were looking to read interviews about highly technical shit i'd prefer reading an email correspondence

the audience was ceos and executives

so I would write an article and the editor would wave his hand and be like ~more numbers~

and then I would make a couple pie charts and call it a day

also I would be interviewing german scientists with short tempers over the phone and would be sweating bullets, so I preferred fixing a couple grammatical errors in emails to that

I think email interviews are fine, but for some really odd reason, I don't like emailed "letters to the editor."

as a reader and not a journalist i want to say lex is so OTM here

― gr8080, Wednesday, January 19, 2011 4:56 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark Suggest Ban Permalink

except that you have in fact read email interviews & been entertained by them, no?

yeah i never said email interviews are worthless

\oO/ i dont see how im not steering the conversation regardless but w/e i dont want to make it seem like i feel more passionately about email interviews than i do so

here's an e-mail interview with Flynt Flo$$y, an artist i am fascinated with and totally interested in learning more about:

http://blogs.villagevoice.com/music/2011/01/qa_flynt_flossy.php

here's a transcribed in-person interview with Scott Caan, an actor I don't really care that much about:

http://www.esquire.com/features/the-screen/scott-caan-interview-0211

The Flynt Flo$$y thing is so fucking frustrating to read because its basically a press release or at best what amounts to an "about us" page on an artist's web site. The whole Turquoise Jeep thing is kind of an enigma and I really want to know where they're coming from, what kind of music/comedy backgrounds they have etc. This "interview" doesn't give me any of that. Basically the only thing I learned is that a local promoter hooked them up with the Big Boi gig and that there are fake twitter accounts using their names. (I do appreciate that they disclosed the fact it was conducted via e-mail)

On the other hand I didn't learn that much about Scott Caan either, but at least dude talked about crying and his dad and how to photograph naked women. It was entertaining to read.

I still like Flynt Flo$$y better than Scott Caan, and yeah Esquire Magazine has more money than the music section of the Village voice but email interviews are boring compared to a good conversation.

Caan comes off kinda...mildly retarded.

but maybe thats just a shitty email interview?

can you imagine if esquire was asking Flynt Flo$$y about his moustache instead of Scott Caan about his pompadour?

hey dont blame email interviews bcuz esquire isnt up on the turquoise jeep

yah but I can blame village voice for squandering an opportunity to fund out something interesting about them. and email interviews for not making it easy on them.

so yeah, email 'interviews' are totally the worst thing ever right?

people are SO unreliable! smh

I used to be 100% against doing email intvus (though I did at least one intvu by fax in the late 90s). But circumstances have necessitated a few times and I've had a few great experiences and a couple of annoying ones.
Last year I had an email exchange from Hawaii with a filmmaker who was in Berlin. I had enough lead time and he was generous enough with his time that I just kept sending follow up questions & he kept replying right up until I finished the article.
But I much prefer phoners--90% of my "journalism" has been 600-wd profiles of touring musicians previewing upcoming shows, so the physical possibility of an in-person interview is remote--because It feels like I then own the interview. As much as skipping transcription saves agony, waiting on an email response if unknowable usefulness is 1000 times worse. Or if you have to suddenly change tack. Many times the questions I've thought would be the key to getting good quotes produced nothing and then I've been able to just talk through or get the subject to talk it through and find something unexpected.
And over the phone, no one can see me roll my eyes. I have a wide range of rhetorical tools at hand via telephone, my clumsy social awkwardness becomes a Columbo-esque asset. In person, I'm just a self-conscious dork.

I think e-mail interviews are really unprofessional. I quit my last job because I had an E-MAIL argument with an unprofessional e-mail interviewer. (She could not SPELL and was evasive in her questions). The interviewer actually called my boss to complain about my annoyed response to the e-mailer's unprofessional conduct.

So like my boss had too many questions about "what I said" in my e-mail and I said screw it, they were unprofessional and I'm sick of this place anyway. I said, "I'm doing you a favor by leaving if you take her side".

transcribing and recording phone interviews is a lot harder than an email interview, but you know what, that's your job y'all. email inties are significantly worse imho.

^^

The tone and the meanderings of a conversational interview will naturally be different than an email interview. A conversation allows more of the interviewee's personality to come across, especially if they have a quick wit.

But I can see where an email interview could be a stronger, better interview under certain circumstances. Most definitely email could shine where there is a lot of substance and nuance, and both parties are gifted writers and are giving the exchange their full attention.

there are basically two scenarios that happen in every e-mail interview -- either the interviewee is a terrible typist or just not very good at expressing themselves in text form, and the whole thing is a mess, or they type out such long, articulate, considered answers that the interviewer is rendered irrelevent and you realize the piece should just be redone as an essay by the subject.

In my experience, e-mail interviews are fine as a form - like when you give the same interview to everyone who applies. But when it comes across as a personal haphazard and (sometimes) poorly spelled e-mail, it's a bad idea, it says you either don't care or don't have time to find the best candidate.

I thought the purpose of an e-mail interview was to just get the basic information about an applicant...idiosyncratic communications aren't always clearly understood by the recipient.

It would appear that some of the people in this thread are talking about journalistic interviews and others are talking about job interviews. This situation has the potential for confusion.

every time i've skimmed to thread to see if anyone talked about anything besides journalism i didn't see anything that really pertained to job interviews

email interviews seem to be shit for v similar reasons whether regarding journalism or jobs

Yeah this thread is about like, interviewing bands and such, right? not going for jobs (who would do that by email!??!?!?)

Nah i like em

Often I've found that non-native English speakers much prefer them. These days I will always confer directly with an editor if an interview subject says they prefer that.