Comments on: Interviews: phone, email — which is best? http://mathewingram.com/media/2007/04/24/interviews-phone-email-which-is-best/ ...watching the intersection of the Web and media Thu, 20 Nov 2008 11:52:49 +0000 http://wordpress.org/?v=2.5 By: Ryan Sholin http://mathewingram.com/media/2007/04/24/interviews-phone-email-which-is-best/#comment-2560 Ryan Sholin Wed, 25 Apr 2007 04:04:15 +0000 http://mathewingram.com/media/2007/04/24/interviews-phone-email-which-is-best/#comment-2560 As a reporter, I hated doing e-mail interviews. Especially on technology stories, I need the source to explain things so my readers can understand them, not in a bunch of jargon. It can take a few questions and repetitions and variations to get a clean quote out of someone, but it means I never need to put something they didn't say into a bracketed quote "as if they had said [the thing I thought they meant]." The solution, for folks like Dave and Steve and Jason and Mike, should be to record the phone call and serve it up as a podcast. That way, I get my story, and they get their record, plus the news org gets another point of entry. Everybody's happy. As a reporter, I hated doing e-mail interviews. Especially on technology stories, I need the source to explain things so my readers can understand them, not in a bunch of jargon.

It can take a few questions and repetitions and variations to get a clean quote out of someone, but it means I never need to put something they didn’t say into a bracketed quote “as if they had said [the thing I thought they meant].”

The solution, for folks like Dave and Steve and Jason and Mike, should be to record the phone call and serve it up as a podcast. That way, I get my story, and they get their record, plus the news org gets another point of entry.

Everybody’s happy.

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