Interview skills: Share the destination with your subjects

Lisa Mullins, chief anchor and senior producer for Public Radio International’s “The World,” recently talked about interview tactics and skills with Andre Pizer for the Nieman Storyboard. Mullins had a lot of good tips to share. But the best was about how to begin, how to give your interview subject a sense of where you wanted to go. Mullins explained:

“I tell them ahead of time what I might want. If we’re on deadline, and the person we’re going to be talking to is what we call a kind of ‘normal person,’ maybe part of a couple in Dublin who is talking to us about how the seismic financial cuts are affecting them personally, they may be reluctant, they may be shy, they may be reticent to reveal too much. If I say, ‘What I’d like to leave the audience with is an idea of what your life is like right now,’ then they will start telling me the information I need in the form of a story.”

That is one of those simple but rarely done parts of a great interview. Too many reporters feel they have to lead a subject down a path. Instead, engage the person in leading you down the path by taking the time before you begin to sketch where you would like to go, what you hope to write about, and, perhaps, how their story will likely affect readers. That also means a reporter, and hopefully their editor, have talked about the focus of the story ahead of time to make the most of each interview.

And this is not just great advice for broadcast or video pieces, but print as well.