There is a science to interviewing that is at play no matter how intuitively one is able to arrive at it. The action/reaction of questioning and the answers it provokes, the chemistry of the emotions (both for the subject and the interviewer) and the accuracy needed to deliver the data—these aspects can all be mapped and charted. To treat your role with care—even meticulousness—can help facilitate the higher levels of the interview process. — Martin Perlich, The Art of the Interview
  • Interviews for documentary or feature production
  • Interviews for broadcast (edited, or live to tape)
  • Interviews for oral history

What are the steps to creating a great interview?

Find the right interviewee

Research

Write Questions

Put the interviewee at ease

LISTEN

Follow up

Wrap it up

Find the right interviewee

  • Word of mouth
  • Direct reference
  • Facebook/Social Media

Pre-Interview

What are you looking for? Someone who has the right information – YES, but more importantly, someone who can tell a STORY. Someone who can take a bit of prodding, who can be off the cuff.

  • Can they talk?
  • Can they tell a story?
  • Can they be reflective.

The most knowledgable source in the world will not necessarily be the right talker. Radio Lab’s Executive Producer Ellen Horne says CASTING is key. It can take weeks to find the right person/character to tell the story.

NOTE: In a pre-interview, get just enough to get what you need, not too much so they don’t sound pre-rehearsed in actual interview. You want them to sound fresh.

Resource list for finding science interviewees

Google

Google Scholar

SCIRUS - http://www.scirus.com/

(Science Information Search Engine) With over 545 million scientific items indexed at last count, it allows researchers to search for not only journal content but also scientists’ homepages, courseware, pre-print server material, patents and institutional repository and website information.

Public Library of Science - http://www.plos.org

We are a nonprofit publisher and advocacy organization. Every article that we publish is open-access - freely available online for anyone to use.

PubMed - http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pubmed

PubMed comprises more than 22 million citations for biomedical literature from MEDLINE, life science journals, and online books. Citations may include links to full-text content from PubMed Central and publisher web sites.

Go Pub Med - http://www.gopubmed.org/web/gopubmed/

Knowledge-based search engine for biomedical texts. It allows users to identify experts in the biomedical field.

Eureka Alerts - http://www.eurekalert.org/

EurekAlert! is an online, global news service operated by AAAS, the science society. EurekAlert! provides a central place through which universities, medical centers, journals, government agencies, corporations and other organizations engaged in research can bring their news to the media. EurekAlert! also offers its news and resources to the public. EurekAlert! features news and resources focused on all areas of science, medicine and technology.

Web of Science- http://thomsonreuters.com/products_services/science/science_products/a-z/web_of_science/

Web of Science ® provides researchers, administrators, faculty, and students with quick, powerful access to the world’s leading citation databases. Authoritative, multidisciplinary content covers over 12,000 of the highest impact journals worldwide, including Open Access journals and over 150,000 conference proceedings. You’ll find current and retrospective coverage in the sciences, social sciences, arts, and humanities, with coverage to 1900.

http://www.science.gov/

Science.gov searches over 55 databases and over 2100 selected websites from 13 federal agencies, offering 200 million pages of authoritative U.S. government science information including research and development results.

Science Daily - http://sciencedaily.com/

National Association of Science Writers - http://www.nasw.org/

CDC - http://www.cdc.gov/

NIH - http://www.nih.gov/

NSF - http://www.nsf.gov/

WHO - http://www.who.int/en/

Wired Science - http://www.wired.com/wiredscience/

Chance favors only the prepared mind. — Louis Pasteur

Research

Learn everything you can about your interviewee in the time you have.

  • Read what they’ve written.
  • Listen to their previous interviews.
  • Check out their website.
  • Learn what classes they teach.

Know your stuff. Then act like you don’t know very much at all.

Preparation is good but don’t leave your audience behind. Some interviewers won’t go into an interview unless they feel they know nearly as much as their guest about the topic… Then come interview time, it seems that some of their questions are worded in a way to impress the guest. They want to show off that they’ve done their homework… if you are so well prepared that your interview sounds like two colleagues at an academic conference, then you run the risk of leaving your listener, who hasn’t done all the research, behind.” (Paul Ingles)

Put yourself in the mind of the uniformed listener. They’re washing dishes, or sitting in their car, or working out. Some of what they need to know to follow the conversation will come in an intro or back announce. You don’t need to give a listener a Masters degree on the subject to get to the heart of the story.

Get at values, feelings and motivation, as well as information. Radio is not as good at disseminating facts as it is the feelings and emotions of people who are involved in issues. So find out how people involved feel about this trend or that trend. Why do they care? Getting at those root feelings can bring a story around to the common themes of human experience that listeners can relate to. — Paul Ingles, NPR Liaison to Independent Producers

Write your questions

What do you want?

Know in advance what you want to get from the interview, but be open to the conversation heading in a different direction.

The order of your questions is as important as the questions themselves.

Give your interview a narrative - a beginning middle and end.

“Try to have an arc to the interview—a continuum that follows an orderly path through a life, a career, a project. Another option is to divide it into sections: Art, personal stuff, pet causes or community service. Make it easy for your listener to follow the story.” (Bob Edwards)

Make your questions related, not random. (Susan Stamberg)

Only ask one question at a time.

“… ask two, and they’ll just answer the one they like.” (Neal Conan)

Keep your questions short.

Make your questions open-ended.

  • Avoid questions that can be answered with a yes or no.
  • Use questions that begin with why, how, what kind of, can you tell me about, can you describe…
  • Paint me a picture.
  • Take me through the day.
  • Tell me more about that.
  • How do you feel about that.
  • Tell me a story about…

“Try not to embed answers in your questions… Instead of asking, say, “Do you still get scared before you go on stage or at this point are butterflies a thing of the past?” ask, “How do you feel just before you go on stage.” That kind of indeterminacy increases the possibility of a surprising or subtler or truer answer.” (Greg Kot, APM’s Sound Opinions)

Start general, dig deeper, then step back and reflect.

Good opening questions:

  • How did you first become interested in your field?
  • If on location – what are we looking at here? Where are we?
  • Make it personal. Make it easy. Give them a chance to get comfortable.

Slowly work up to the more complicated/challenging questions if appropriate.

“Don’t start with your toughest, most provocative questions. Build up to them after developing a bit of rapport with the interviewee. Look for openings in the conversation that allow for you to work in those tough questions. “Since you brought up X, were you surprised at how much of a controversy it became?” (Paul Ingles)

BUT: Don’t necessarily leave the “tough” questions to the end.

“Journalists of every kind always tend to do this in interviews, of course – you don’t want the interviewee cranky and guarded at the beginning, and for many of us, who are weenies, we want the potentially uncomfortable part of the interview to be as brief as possible. But the right kind of difficult question can pay off in good radio in unpredictable ways, more than enough over the long haul to justify one’s own discomfort.” (Kurt Anderson, Studio 360)

Ask anything, just phrase it in the right way.

“Just about any question is OK to ask, if you phrase it in the right way. When bringing up delicate subjects, don’t make it confrontational or personal. But a hint of empathy in the way the question is phrased can often elicit a more personal response. "The public/the media/the industry perceive what happened this way…. What was going through your mind when you read/saw/heard about that.” (Greg Kot, Sound Opinions)

Other Good Questions:

  • Hold a mirror up to what it is you do for a living. Tell me what you see.
  • Why do you do what you do?
  • What’s new in your life and work; describe the green, growing edge of what it is you do.

[NOTE: Don’t edit out that thoughtful pause you’ll almost invariably get afterward. I love ‘hearing’ the guest think, really think. From Brian Newhouse, APM’s Symphony Cast)

Don’t be afraid to address the opposing view:

  • What do you say to those who say… [insert the opposite view…]?

Indulge yourself.

Ask the question you’ve always wanted to ask.

End with an opportunity to reflect or think about the big picture.

The “Catch-All” ending:

  • Is there anything that I didn’t ask you about that you wanted to say?
  • Is there anything else I need to know?

Have more questions than you will need for the time you have, but star the ones you know are most important.

Learn your questions. Possibly memorize them. Or have them in front of you, but be familiar enough with them that you can ask them when they fit into whatever subject the guest brings up rather than being bound to the order of the questions as you have them listed. Try not to look at your question list during the interview. Remember – this is a conversation.

  • OPTION 1: Flash card approach: give yourself a few key words, but then phrase the question in your own words in the moment while looking the interviewee in the eye. (Greg Kot, APM)

  • OPTION 2: Tell your guest that, before you’re done, you’ll check your question list to see if you forgot anything. This way you can relax into the conversation without feeling like you might miss something important. (Paul Ingles)

Have a few questions ready as emergency fallbacks, but listen to what your subject is saying. Be flexible enough to go in the direction that he or she is taking you. If you are prepared and are listening well, your interviewee will tell you what your next question should be. (Neal Conan)