Part 4 in the “Interview Insights” Article Series
By ACN Past President Elaine Shein
Ever ask what you thought was the most clever question ever, but then ended up disappointed with the answer? Or when you checked your notes later you realized there wasn’t enough of an answer to construct a strong quote for your story?
That’s when you wonder what happened — why didn’t you get a better quote?
For me, one of the most revealing lessons of what was wrong with my questions was when I had to go through a translator in another country.
I was in Chile in 1996 on a Rotary Group Study Exchange and was visiting several farms, ag companies, politicians, etc. Prior to the trip, I had worried about how I would do interviews since I had no knowledge of Spanish. Fortunately, Rotary kindly first sent my handful of colleagues and me to the Berlitz Learning Center in Coral Gables, Florida for a week of intensive Spanish to prepare us for five weeks in Chile.
With my new limited Spanish, I ventured boldly forth to try to do my interviews, thankful that often we had a translator to help our group.
When I wanted to ask my questions, I often added whatever extra knowledge I already had about that sector of agriculture or comments we heard from other sources or even some anecdote that I thought might impress or influence the person being interviewed.
Or, to be honest, sometimes my questions became pretty convoluted with more than one question.
I’d then patiently wait for the translator to take my long question and say it almost exactly as I said it, but in another language as he spoke to the farmers or other sources.
Instead, I was puzzled as the translator would nod that he understood my question, turn to the source and … turn my very long question into one perhaps a quarter of the length I originally said.
At first, I was worried the translator had misunderstood me, but then I realized that when the source would reply back — through the translator — I got my answer. In fact, often the answer was even better than I expected or deserved. Usually it would be clear, to the point and gave me the facts I wanted.
As this continued, and especially as I began to understand more Spanish, I began to realize what was happening and why I was getting some of my best interviews.
Frankly, the translator was cleaning up my questions. He stripped out all the extraneous content and got them down to the simplest backbone of the questions — the who, what, where, when and why.
The other revelation I had was the simpler and more direct the question, the more willing someone would be to answer it. The person was less guarded, more cooperative and didn’t have my extra words and opinions, or even misunderstandings between us, to divert attention from what should be the question.
My own opinions, attitudes or even misinformation wasn’t clouding up the conversation or forcing the other person to get sidetracked or uneasy.
Once I figured out this was happening and how successful it could be, that was probably one of the biggest changes in my life for how I approached questions. It was less about me — and more about the question.
For example, I interviewed four brothers in Los Loros, Chile and remember standing up on the mountains with them as we looked down on the Copiapo Valley where they had their vineyard.
My Rotary group had already visited a few Chilean vineyards, been given talks about Chile’s regions and climate, and knew the Atacama desert is the driest place in the world.
But instead of sharing what I already heard from a few weeks of travel, I focused on the brothers as we stood on a barren mountaintop where the Incas once stood.
How much rain do you get each year? How does that affect your vineyard? What happens when you get too much rain? When there was a mudslide, what happened? What happened next?
In my story for The Western Producer, I shared what one of the brothers, Alberto Pesentis, said as he stood there.
“Normally, 40 to 50 millimetres of rain falls in the region each year. In the last five years, there has been almost no rain.
“We’re not affected here, but further down the river farmers are affected by no water in the river,” he said.
And when the rains do come, they are not always helpful.
A few years ago a sudden downpour sent a dangerous mudslide roaring through the valley, destroying everything in its path. Vineyards and farmhouses were swept along with the mud. It rushed past the driveway leading to their yard, but the Pesentis escaped. Five hundred truckloads of mud were later removed from the valley.“
I realize I will never be a cable TV personality/host because in their cases, their questions are often totally the opposite of being simple; they are more often about entertainment, giving their own opinions, and even showing off.
That doesn’t mean every question we do as ag communicators should be just simple questions; sometimes we need to ask questions that are a bit more complicated or raise something we know/heard/read somewhere else to get a person to respond, elaborate, confirm, deny or even agree with another statement.
The lesson for us is to learn when the simplest questions might be the most effective to get what we want from our sources and use them to our advantage.
This week’s challenge: Listen or watch a press conference and pay attention to the questions — were they good questions or were they more to show off what the interviewer already knew or thought about the topic? What would you say about how you ask questions?
To see an example of how an actual question can get lost in the setup, check out this YouTube interview posted on March 5, 2022, of a Boston College history professor setting up her first question in a sit-down interview with President Joe Biden and how he responded. What do you think of the first question and answer? What do you think she could have asked instead?
Please share your feedback on the Agricultural Communicators Network’s Facebook page!
Shein is DTN Associate Managing Editor in Omaha, Nebraska. She has formerly worked for Capital Press in Oregon, The Western Producer and Regina Leader-Post in Saskatchewan, Canada, and Gemini News Service in London, England.
Elaine Shein can be reached at [email protected]