I once estimated how many bylined pieces I’ve published in my five decades of scribbling for money. Including everything from 300-word bleats to 8,000-word slabs, I believe I’ve written somewhere around 3,000 stories.
Now imagine how many interviews I have conducted for all that work. Imagine the number of dumb questions, astute questions, informative replies, curt replies, self-indulgent monologues, misheard statements, revelations, lies, confessions, obfuscations, factual errors, wrong memories, hazy memories, remarkable memories, “ums” “ahs” and “wells…”, the number of times scientists began an answer with “so…”, profanities excised, profanities left in, misheard Qs, misheard As, illegible notes that appeared to have been written by my foot, failed recorders, unfortunate statements, and bon mots. There’s been a lot.
Important note: Most have been for magazine features: arranged, unrushed, detailed, comprehensive, sometimes but not often confrontational. Rarely have I done interviews familiar to newspaper reporters — eyewitnesses, next of kin, celebrities on junkets, members of the audience, athletes in locker rooms (thank god).
That said, I’ve listened to myself for 50 years, and the advent of podcasts means now I’ve listened to dozens of other people conduct interviews. A few do it very well, with grace and courtesy and minds electric with curiosity. Some — including big names in the business — are terrible. The spacious middle of the bell curve is occupied by people who do all right but do things that sometimes leave me talking back to my phone or dashboard in exasperation.
Exasperation leads to action. Hence this baker’s dozen observations and comments about interviewing.
I.
I have read so many articles and interviews about how to conduct an interview, perhaps too many. So many that I’ve lost count of the number of people who have said, “A good interview becomes a conversation.”
Well…
An interview is a formal process … We are not engaged in conversation.
A conversation is a generous exchange of thoughts and feelings. It’s a little gift economy of information, opinion, courtesy, affirmation and acknowledgment that creates social links and reinforces bonds and makes possible reasoned social discourse. It’s how we maintain kinship, friendship and alliances, how we resolve conflict, how we express ourselves outside art. It’s how a society coheres and a culture responds to change.
An interview is a formal process in which I, the reporter, request information from you, the subject. I have honestly declared who I am and why I want to interview you. Our relationship is professional only. We are not friends, kin, allies or collaborators, no matter how amiable our exchange might be. We are not engaged in conversation.
II.
So what? This: If you replay the recording of an interview and what you hear is a conversation, then you talked too much and listened not enough. You have let the interview become, in part, a platform for your own views, emotions, anecdotes, biography, and it’s unlikely that any of that is pertinent to your story. You have overlooked that your subject probably has little interest in you and thus little interest in a chat. What have you gained by expending a quarter or a third of your limited interview time talking about yourself to someone who doesn’t care?
III.
At more of a meta-level, pretending that an interview is a conversation is less than honest. Pretending to become your subject’s friend or ally or confidant is a con — usually a little one, but a con all the same. It’s all too easy to betray the person across the table. Ethical professionals keep their notebooks open, their pens in motion and their intentions clear. Some of our respondents will make wrong assumptions about this relationship and believe that they were, indeed, part of a friendly or sympathetic conversation. There’s not much we can do about that, but we don’t need to encourage it.
IV.
Which is not to downplay the importance of rapport. When a journalist sits down to be interviewed about interviewing, or addresses a conference, and brings up turning an interview into a conversation, what they’re often talking about is establishing some kind of unthreatening common ground that will persuade the subject to be forthcoming. There are dozens of reasons for people to be reluctant to talk to us, starting with their own shyness or reticence or wariness about the press. We do need our subjects to trust us, and that’s harder when we can’t find our way to rapport.
Ethical professionals keep their notebooks open, their pens in motion and their intentions clear.
Establishing good rapport is not easy and never guaranteed. It starts with clarity about roles and intentions: I’m here to ask you questions, you see me writing down your answers, and you are responsible for what you say. If I can convince you that I will be honest and professional and that I intend to listen, we will be off to a good start.
V.
The fastest way to rapport is to show, from the first question, that we are paying attention. Few people can resist talking to someone who is not only listening, but taking them seriously enough to write down what they’re saying. We all crave acknowledgment and we all want to be heard. Approach someone with honest interest and attentiveness and you find that often as not, your problem will not be getting them to talk. Your problem will be getting them to stop.
VI.
Accept that you will never establish rapport with some people. No matter what you do, they remain icy, hostile, suspicious, or all but mute. Journalists do not come armed with subpoenas; no one ever has to talk to us. Why someone would agree to an interview with me and then refuse to answer my questions is a mystery, but I’ve had it happen more than once. People can be funny that way.
The fastest way to rapport is to show, from the first question, that we are paying attention.
Sometimes the damnedest things open someone up. Many years ago I flew from Cincinnati, Ohio, to Birmingham, Alabama, to investigate a financial scandal. There was someone who had known the central figure of my story all his life, so I called this guy up and he agreed to be interviewed. When I sat down in his CEO’s office, though, it was obvious within five minutes that he had no inclination to answer any of my questions. I’d come hundreds of miles for these interviews, but he didn’t care. He wouldn’t even stop his paperwork to meet my gaze. After about 15 painful, worthless minutes, I noticed that he had a collection of miniature duck decoys sitting on a table by my chair. I picked one up and correctly identified it as a hooded merganser. He looked at me quizzically and asked me to name another one. I named three more. (Don’t ask me why I knew the species of ducks; I just did.) Suddenly, I was in business. He couldn’t believe that a boy from Ohio knew ducks (in his pronunciation, duuuucks), but since I did, I was good people and he’d be glad to answer my questions. Which he did for the next 45 minutes.
There ya go.
VII.
On the matter of questions: Ask them one at a time. Not, “Could you tell me what happened ______, and also why ______, and what you think came of it?” Ask a single question, keep it short, then shut up and listen. The answer will lead to the next question, and the next; you don’t need to bundle them four at a time. In my experience, the quality of answers is in inverse proportion to the number of questions you pose in one breath. You will get around to all of them, at least the important ones.
VIII.
And don’t supply answers to your own question: “Why did you leave the meeting early? Was it ___, or because ___, or your disaffection with ___?” You are here to ask questions, not administer a multiple-choice test. Just ask, then shut up and listen.
Ask a single question, keep it short, then shut up and listen.
When you supply a set of possible answers, you do one of two things, neither of them good. If it’s a knotty question, you provide your subject with an off-ramp to avoid a more straightforward, candid, and revealing answer. Or you signal that you’ve already composed the story in your mind and aren’t listening to anything except what contributes to and validates that narrative. Or both. Let your subject provide the answers. Set the stage for surprise.
IX.
And anyway, supplying possible replies is a subconscious form of competing with your subject, a sort of stealthy bragging that you already know the answers. Don’t do that. Don’t compete with your subject. No matter how experienced we are, we never get over a certain amount of insecurity when we go in to interview someone. It’s all too easy to allow that insecurity to turn the interview into a sort of status competition. Don’t pretend that you know more than you do. Don’t waste everyone’s time by trying to assert common status where there isn’t any. In the context of the interview, your subject has the higher ground — she knows more about something than you do, and you’re the one who needs to hear it. That’s why you’re here with a notebook. Get over it.
X.
But don’t approach an interview as a supplicant, either, apologetic for taking time out of your subject’s day or in need of explanation or enlightenment because gosh, you know this is an imposition and thank you so much for agreeing to my dumb questions.
No matter how experienced we are, we never get over a certain amount of insecurity when we go in to interview someone.
A proper interview is a professional transaction, and your subject isn’t gifting you with anything. We’re all adults here and your subject consented to be interviewed. Never apologize for doing your job, and don’t be sorry (or sheepish) about all you don’t know.
I cringe when I hear journalists or podcasters say, five times in a 30-minute interview, “Could you please talk a little bit about…” A “little bit”? Why only a little bit? You want your subject to tell you a lot, so why be timid about asking for it? You don’t need to act grateful for having been granted an audience. Your subject hopes to gain something, too; that’s why he or she agreed to see you.
XI.
Over the course of five decades, my shortest interviews all began with the subject stating, “I won’t talk to you unless I get to read the story before it’s published.” (I never agree to that, and if the subject insists, the interview is over.) My longest single interview took 10 hours, with a forensic psychiatrist who is an expert on serial killers. We began at noon, after he’d kept me waiting in his office lobby for an hour past our appointment. Then we talked through lunch, we talked through him canceling an appointment so we could keep talking, and we finally stopped at 10 p.m. only because we were too hungry to keep going. The next night we got together for five more hours. It was all valuable and not once boring. And not once did I say, “Could you tell me a little bit about…”
If an interview is vital for your story, do what you can to leave the rest of your day open. You never know what might happen in that ninth hour.
XII.
If your job entails talking to elected officials or corporate executives or athletes or police officers or entertainers, you will encounter people who are adept at dominating the room and dictating terms. I once interviewed the CEO of a large insurance company. He had a doctorate and insisted, in all situations, on being addressed as Dr. Barrett, so I might have known what I was in for. He walked into the meeting room and handed me a piece of paper. This was our “interview,” already written by him, despite our never having spoken. He’d composed it as a dialogue — Mr. Keiger’s questions, Dr. Barrett’s answers. As far as he was concerned, once I had the paper in my possession the interview was over. I am rarely speechless. This time I came close. But in the end I courteously informed him that this would not be sufficient and I intended to ask him some further questions. He didn’t look pleased, but he didn’t throw me out, either.
You want your subject to tell you a lot, so why be timid about asking for it?
For a successful interview, you — the one with the notebook — want to be in charge. You should never be arrogant or dismissive or abrupt about it, but whenever possible you do need to be firm in a courteous way. You may not succeed in getting what you need from a domineering subject — honest, factual, detailed answers are not required by law — but sometimes it’s better to walk away than to cede control. If you’ve had to do so, the next day call the person back to reschedule. You’ve established the ground rules, and you’ll be surprised how often you get another shot at the interview.
XIII.
Expect the unexpected.
An artist once interrupted one of our many interviews for a magazine profile by announcing he wanted to paint my portrait, and he did. It made for a good bit in the story. A few weeks later, he exhibited the picture at City Hall. My wife hated it.
Speaking to people right after lunch can be problematic. The CEO of a large investment firm nearly fell asleep in the middle of our interview. I watched him struggle to remain attentive, but his eyes were crossing and he kept listing in his chair. He was a courteous man and I felt bad for him.
Another CEO, this one the boss of a huge jet-engine manufacturer, a Fortune 100 company, interrupted our interview because, he said, “I have to tinkle.”
I’ve often spoken to people in their homes. On one such occasion, my subject’s toddler daughter climbed into my lap during the interview and fell asleep.
I once had a subject, a horse trainer, warn me not to pet her barn cat. I did anyway. The cat bit me. Guess I should have shut up and listened.
* * *
Dale Keiger, retired editor of Johns Hopkins Magazine, is author of the anthology “The Man Who Signed the City: Portraits of Remarkable People” and writes a newsletter of essays in “The Joggled Mind.”
