Customer Reviews

Writer's Complete Guide to Conducting Interviews

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A terrific introduction to the art and craft of conducting interviews. Of course, I learned it all by trial and error. Duh! I wish I had read this book about ten years ago. Offers very practical and practicable advice on how to get the most out of your sources. Heartily recommended for would-be writers and journalists.

This book packs a lot of information, suggestions, good advice and the reasons behind journalistic practice into a relatively few pages. Other books about interviewing you will find may be marketed on the big names of people the writer has interviewed, but this book mostly concentrates on how to do it. It does a good job of covering interviews of various types and purposes, and helps you get your foot in the door, choose the best methods, and avoid cliches.

There are several purposes a writer may have in interviewing, they may be writing a news story, such as for a daily paper, they may be writing an extended interview with a famous person, they may be interviewing someone with specific knowledge or experiences to include in a book, "Conducting Interviews" does a good job of covering the differences of approach you will want to take, and the essential factors in common to all of these.

The book provides many examples of successes and mistakes in interviewing people, some of them very famous, by this author and other experienced reporters. Once you understand the kinds of questions an interviewer should ask, and the kinds of cues one should pick up on you will learn to read or watch interviews with a more critical eye, and you'll be able to tell when an opportunity is seized, or when one is missed.

The only place the information in this book seems dated, or possibly incomplete, is in the advice on tape-recording the interview. I suspect that if you don't already have something for the purpose you would want to buy a digital sound recorder. Even so, much of the advice is probably still sound, such as testing your equipment, bringing extra batteries, and the pros and cons of extensive note-taking as opposed to relying on a recording which may not be there when you get to the point of writing your article.

This book is no-nonsense, information dense, and a fairly complete treatment of the subject. You will not waste your time if you read it.