Last night, our Cre-Comm class had to find a story at the Blue Bombers' game. It required interviewing several fans until we found an interesting human interest story to write about. But what I never realized was how hard it is to conduct a good interview.
For this kind of assignment, it was difficult to plan any questions ahead of time, other than some basic starter questions. I found I had to go with the flow of the interview and come up with relevant questions that would inspire brilliant answers from my interview subject... much easier said than done. Here's why:
1. I was extremely nervous. Much more nervous than I thought I would be. When I approached the fans, I felt as if I was imposing on their time, and I didn't want to waste anymore of it than I had to.
2. Some people just aren't very interesting. No, that's too harsh, but not a lot of people have original, interesting stories related to the Winnipeg Blue Bombers!
3. Some interesting people just aren't very talkative. It was painful to get any answer worth quoting from them. I still need to figure out what makes a good interview question and inspires good answers.
When I woke up this morning, and looked at my quotes, I was frustrated with myself. I thought of a million things I would have done differently. What questions I would ask, how I would re-word things, what I would ask them to elaborate on, etc.
Most importantly, I learned that interviewing is a learning process. And I have much more respect for those who can do it well under pressure.
Those points definitely sum up my Bomber experience too. Saturday certainly opened my eyes to the real world of reporting! However, I do think "real-life" journalists have an advantage (besides their experience) in that they go to some events knowing what story they want and which angle to take.
ReplyDeleteCool pic! Was that taken in the CBC building in Toronto?
GO Mansbridge! I used to want to be him, haha when I was younger of course!
ReplyDelete