Pt. 2 in the “Interview Insights” Article Series
By Elaine Shein, ACN 2016 Past President
I admit it. I’m hooked. In the last couple years, I’ve found myself watching late-night TV talk shows more than I have ever before in my life. I haven’t figured out if I should blame or thank COVID-19 for this new habit.
I think I will lean towards “thank” and here’s the reason: COVID-19 forced TV talk show hosts to focus more on the art of the interview than the art of entertaining a studio audience. The reduction in number of cameras meant close-ups focused directly on the host — and the person being interviewed through a platform like Skype or Zoom.
There weren’t the distractions of a studio or studio audience. The hosts realized the interviews had to be even stronger to hold the attention of their viewing audience; the hosts had to be well prepared to ask questions and remain very focused as a listener to do sudden, unscripted follow-ups as needed.
Yet they still needed to be what the audience wanted, depending on who was being interviewed. They needed to be hard-hitting, funny, entertaining, educational, news-making, insightful. The host also needed to be able to jump in and cut off or challenge a speaker, tougher to do when you’re not face-to-face in the studio.
What was another challenge for these hosts? Trying to find some new angle or question that the person might never have been asked before by another host, or get an answer that the channel-surfing audience might never have heard before from a different show.
As I watched this, I realized agricultural journalism is not that much different than what we see these hosts do each evening.
A lot of us have the same sources. A lot of us write on the same subjects and chase down the same news.
So what do we do to have an interview that’s NOT like those of our competitors? Or to gain a great quote or new fact or new angle that no one else has?
We’ll get to that more in future columns.
One of the interview techniques I wanted to highlight though is what can you get if you had a certain set of questions that you asked EVERYBODY? How valuable is that? Would that be boring and a waste of time, or could it still be entertaining and get nuggets of information you might not have expected?
Stephen Colbert occasionally dedicates one of his shows to sharing a set of questions he asked various guests during the last few weeks or months. Rather than playing them at the same time as the original interview with the guest, these segments are saved up for one show (for example, on April 30 in 2021 he included The Colbert Questionert segments from three different people).
Colbert would explain these same 15 questions he asked everyone were meant to help him (and his audience) get to know the interviewee better. While some were just for fun (such as “Best sandwich?” or “What number am I thinking of?” or “Apples or oranges?”) there were some that stirred some interesting responses.
A handful of them:
What’s one thing you own that you really should throw out?
Have you ever asked someone for their autograph?
What do you think happens when we die?
Favorite smell?
Most used app on your phone?
You get one song to listen to for the rest of your life, what is it?
Describe the rest of your life in five words.
So can this approach work for ag journalists?
In 2007, the East Oregonian Publishing Company in the Pacific Northwest, now known as the EO Media Group, launched an ambitious project for a year that focused on climate change. This included Capital Press, a weekly agricultural newspaper based in Oregon, along with its sister publications.
One of the company’s owners, Steve Forrester, spearheaded the project and had an idea for part of the package when the staff first brainstormed what the coverage would be. Why not have a set of fixed questions that you can ask several different sources, and then you can have the resulting Q and A as sidebars in the special sections published about climate change through the year.
There were four key questions: 1) How serious is climate change? 2) How does it show itself in your region? 3) What was the “tipping point” for you? And 4) What do you personally do to prevent adding to the problem?
The people asked these questions included a professor, a bank scientist, a state climatologist, a manager of the North American Research for Tropospheric Ozone, a science teacher, an internationally known writer and biologist, and a consulting ecologist.
Readers got insight into these people and what they thought, but the assignment also influenced the writing staff and editors into thinking more about the big picture of how is climate change seen in certain areas and its impact. It tied nicely to other stories being done.
As for how successful was the overall special package called “Our climate is changing … ready or not”, it went on to receive the 2007 Grantham Prize — Award of Special Merit, along with many other awards.
This week’s challenge: Think of five questions you could ask five people, where they all receive the same set of questions — but you think will trigger insightful different replies from each person.
Also, please go to the Agricultural Communicators Network’s Facebook page and share some of those questions you came up with and to get ideas from others.
Elaine Shein is Chairwoman of ACN’s International Committee. She 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 e[email protected].