Perhaps you need to interview someone for a story on a blog, website or annual report. Here’s how to begin.
1. Start with immaculate preparation, learning anything and everything about the subject and her/his area of expertise. No one does this better than Philadelphia’s own Terry Gross, host of National Public Radio’s award-winning “Fresh Air.”
2. The corollary: Know the answers to factual questions before you ask the questions. That’s because you’re looking for the subject’s opinion.
3. Choose the perfect place to hold the interview. There’s always the phone, of course, which works well for a five-minute question or a straight factual piece. But if you want to grasp character and tone as well as words, what would be a good place?
• Keep the subject away from other people, especially people s/he knows. Unless you’re a rank beginner, and you feel the need for support, you don’t want a public relations person sitting in the room, coaching or editing your subject.
• Select a place where the person is comfortable, especially in her/his home. That’s where you’ll find how s/he decorates or treats the dog. Once, when I profiled a Big Doctor, he invited me to his home so we could avoid interruptions. He insisted I tour his home, which I thought irrelevant. But then he opened his custom-made, floor-to-ceiling shoe closet, where tilted shelves displayed 60 pairs of identical Gucci tasseled loafers. In the published story, that tidbit explained his impeccable grooming.
• Sometimes offices offer surprising details. When I interviewed the director of the driving-test center, his 20-foot long cinderblock windowsill overflowed with cactus plants. Gave me the opportunity to compare the prickliness of his personality and his plants. (See a post on writing about details.)
• If possible, extend your interview over multiple days, preferably in varied settings. Lunching with an interview subject might be challenging, since you need to choose between typing and wielding a fork, but you might notice that the subject smiles at you while snarling at the server. (You might not elect to write such a detail, but you gain a fuller picture of the personality.)
4. Dress appropriately. If you go to the office of a stranger, determine the company’s dress code. If you meet someone at his home swimming pool, as I once did, avoid pinstripes. Once Billy Jean King, after winning a national tennis championship, refused all interviews except one with Maury Levy, then editor of Philadelphia magazine – because, she said, he was wearing a t-shirt and jeans instead of a suit and tie.
5. The interview begins when you meet the person. Everything you see, smell and hear is on the record.
Questions?
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