Writers -- Don't Fear the Phone!
In Days of Internet Writing, Phone Interviews Still Important
Feb 28, 2009
Blame this strange happening on the Internet. Much Web writing encourages freelance writers to turn in copy as quickly as possible. To do this, writers often write about topics with which they're already familiar. They turn, too, to topics that they can research entirely on the Web.
These stories don't require phone or in-person interviews. They're easy work. It makes sense for writers to turn to such stories because online writing rarely pays enough to justify spending time tracking down sources and scheduling phone interviews.
The prevalence of e-mail has led many writers away from the phone interview, too. A growing number of writers prefer conducting the interviews they do need entirely through e-mail.
This combination, unfortunately, has led to stories that lack humor, personality and those tidbits of information that writers can only obtain by actually speaking to their sources.
The Stilted Story
It's easy enough to pick out interviews that writers conducted by e-mail. They are the ones in which sources speak with perfect grammar. They're the ones where sources saw very little that is surprising.
By conducting an interview by e-mail, writers give sources the time to craft what they consider "perfect" answers. But often, these answers don't sound like they were given by a human being. They sound instead, like they sprang from a computer.
By interviewing a source in person or over the phone, writers may get a quote that hasn't been worried over and fussed with for hours or more. Immediate quotes contain real emotion that e-mailed quotes often lack. They often reflect something that sources in retrospect may have wished that they wouldn't have said.
In short, these are the quotes that breath real life into stories. Without them, a story lacks the personality that makes it shine.
Lazy Writing
It's fine for writers to rely solely on research, online or through other methods, for some stories. Stories that are "just-the-facts" assignments or that are designed to provide basic information in a short amount of space rarely requiring interviews.
But too many writers today avoid the telephone or in-person interview for even longer, more detailed stories.
Many writers are shy. They fear picking up the phone. But journalism isn't a career for writers afraid to speak to others. Relying on Google for every fact, anecdote or statistic is lazy journalism.
Those writers who do make the extra effort to work the phone or schedule the in-person interview will find that their stories are full of personality, wit, emotion and, of course, life.
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