Interview Preparation

Something that was definitely important for me was to look presentable. Why should I expect my interviewee to make the effort to look and be professional when I am not? I also wanted to show that I was serious about this and that to me this wasn't just a school project.

The most important preparation was coming up with good questions. Just like Andrew Denton in Lamble's (2011, pp. 110) News as it happens: An Introduction to Journalism said, “I prepare questions very carefully – and not just each individual questions, but the 'flow' of an interview.” I had to think about what questions would give me the answers I wanted. Not only that, but also think about the possible answers I could receive. If my interviewee gave me an amazing answer but I didn't know or have a follow up question, then I could have potentially missed a path of even more depth for my story. This isn't to say that you can predict everything that they would say, or even that you should rely solely on premeditated questions. Even just listening to their answers in my limited experience has given me great questions to ask. The answers to which I have used in other journalism article assignments.

This all of course leads to having great research. Without having researched what my topic is about, what my interviewee has to do with it and what potential break throughs I could make there really would be no point of coming up with any questions at all. I may as well go there and ask what my interviewees name is, when they were born and what time they go to bed at night. Sure it may be interesting to some people, but does it really have anything to do with what story content I want? I started thinking through some possible questions and doing some research on blood donations, what the donated blood is used for and what people thought about it on the internet. Mostly I thought about what would effect my interviewee. For my second interview, I interviewed a girl who had experience with blood donations and transfusions. I thought, what does she relate to? What situations has she been in that have involved the Red Cross? From there I started to come up with questions about her work, what she thought was important and why she stopped donating blood.

References

 

Lamble, S 2011, News As It Happens: An Introduction To Journalism, Oxford, New York.