A writer’s quest to mastering the interview

I got into journalism for the writing, but it didn’t take long to realize writing is just one part of being a journalist.

My first few years out of journalism school and into the profession was a steep learning curve. Not because of any lack of good training I received from the Michigan State University School of Journalism. I had the great privilege to learn from some incredibly talented veteran professors with years of experience in the field.

Where the training lacked was in the school’s offerings at the time. There were no classes on how to interview, so I was left to figure this important part of being a news writer out on my own.

The student bookstore sold reporter notebooks but there were no classes on reporter shorthand or how to hold a conversation with someone while simultaneously writing legible notes. And my time in college was during that odd transition from typewriter to computer so typing classes were not a thing, leading me to be a crippled hunt-and-pecker totally incapable of keeping type-pace with even the slowest of slow talkers.

There I was, a cub reporter trying to make it at my first community newspaper gig. So many questions. How do you prepare for an interview? Do you go in with a list of questions, or do you just make up questions as you go and see where the conversation takes you? What about follow-up questions, those questions not on your list that you think of while you are trying to listen and understand everything you are hearing during the interview? Do I ask those questions and if so when? What if I don’t ask the question or the question slips out of mind as fast as it slipped in and I come to find out later on that was the question that would have opened the door to the answer I was looking for? What if the person you are interviewing continuously strays off subject? How do you get them back on point? How do I keep myself from drifting from the conversation as ambient sounds and other chatter from conversations nearby or in my own monkey mind grab and slap at me, muddling my ability to listen and comprehend while I frantically scribble down totally untranslatable notes I will have no hope of unscrambling later that day as deadlines loom?

These are all questions that have materialized at the most inopportune times during interviews, ghosts popping up to spook, scare and throw me off balance.

But I managed. Over time I became proficient with the hunt-and-peck and created my own crude form of shorthand. And while I never captured the true art of the concurrent ask, listen, analyze, write and repeat process that journalists of my time were expected to master, I worked with the tools I had.

I must have been somewhat successful as I made a modest living during those early years. I made sense of my notes as much as I could and used my memory of the conversations along with follow-up interviews when needed to piece together notes into stories, articles, and other content. I also found over time that the longer I was covering a certain beat or subject the more familiar I became with it so my knowledge and confidence in that area grew, which helped fill in gaps missed in my note taking and memory lapses.

I also realized over time that technology was my friend and that if you asked nicely and explained, most people I interviewed were fine with me recording our interviews. In fact, I can’t think of anyone who said no to being recorded.

These are all good tools I found over the years and they have helped me become a decent interviewer, but there is one thing that I’ve found that transcends all of this. I’ve found that once I harness this one thing as part of any interview everything else about that interview, the research and the writing and all else surrounding the story, falls into place. That one thing is having curiosity and interest in what you are reporting or writing about. Once you have that you are golden.

I know what you’re thinking. We don’t always get to pick our assignments and the assignments we are given aren’t always on subjects that make us jump up and say, “Hooray! I can’t wait to get started!”

How we perceive a subject can be deceiving, especially if it’s one that comes to us already wrapped in a bad reputation. That is why the most important thing to do is to be curious and find interest not just in the subject you are writing about but in the people who know about or are tied to it. People are incredibly complex and interesting beings, which makes each and every one of us an interesting subject.

One of my favorite jobs as a journalist was writing profiles on people. I once did a double truck feature story on a UPS driver who was retiring. You would think, what is so interesting about a guy who made a career out of delivering packages? You’d be surprised. This guy had delivered for 30 years and over that time he had met many people and made some amazing friendships during those countless trips along his route. Not to mention all the weird and wild encounters he had over that time — each alone would have made for its own feature story. So talking to people and entering them into the mix brings life to the subject and adds soul to your story.

I moved into tax administration communications a few years ago, and I will be totally honest with you at the time I took the job I felt like I was moving backwards in my career. Can you imagine a more boring thing to have to communicate about? How in the world do you make taxes sound interesting? But this is the trap we fall into. This is the type of thought that gets us stuck in believing preconceived reputations – in this case that the topic of taxes is boring and ugly and bad.

Remember, before you get stuck on how the subject is perceived find the people behind the subject who know it, work in it and are passionate about it.

Some of the most kind, intelligent and dedicated people I have met during my entire 30-year career are in tax administration. So, when I write the stories about tax laws, tax policies and all the technical parts of what makes this highly complex world an interesting place (yep, I said interesting), I do so by talking with and delivering the people into the story.

Our tax systems are made up of a bunch of numbers and laws and procedures, but they were created by people. That is what makes the subject of taxes interesting. So, I have this interest that drives my passion to learn more and that makes the interview less of a process and more of a passion. It becomes less of an interview and more of a conversation.

I’ve found connection with the subject and have become familiar with it. I’m not an expert but by connecting with people who are experts and are passionate about and dedicated to the profession, I make a personal connection which in turn creates within me a genuine interest in what I am reporting on.

This is where the magic happens. That newfound interest in taxes allows me to better retain the information, and because I have this expanded knowledge of the subject and am interested I ask more and better questions.

This also shows those I am interviewing that I am truly interested. And once someone sees you are engaged in the conversation, they get excited and become more engaged and open with their conversation leading to an even better interview and richer story.

All those years I’ve spent working to perfect my interview style has led to this one thing — finding in any assignment you are given that nugget that captures your curiosity. It’s all about getting to know the people and from there you get to know how they became interested in the study of screws or tadpoles or brick bats or whatever the subject of your story might be. They become more than interviewees. They become your teachers and from them you can teach others. Because that is what is at the heart of any interview and what reporting is about, right?

So if your editor passes you by for that Taylor Swift exclusive and instead gives you an assignment to interview a small group of teenagers who started a bell ringing orchestra that performs weekly for a family of landbound sea otters living in a miniature woodshed next to an abandon farmhouse in the middle of a fallow Kansas cornfield, take that story and make it yours. Because the true tale of any subject cannot come to be unless the one who tells it is first curious.

By JJ Starr