A WIRED journalist pinged me for some comments on Michael Arrington and his A-list blogger status. I told the journalist to send me the questions by email and he refused. He said Dave Winer did the same thing.
Journalists have been burning subjects for so long with paraphrased quotes, half quotes, and misquotes that I think a lot of folks (especially ones who don't need the press) are taking an email only interview policy. (Mark Cuban did this long ago),
Here is the email I sent back to the journalist on my blackberry (I wonder what Chris Anderson if WIRED thinks of this issue since he is pushing the radical transparency thing).
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I'm an email guy like dave winer.. And I own my words as well, and often print them on my blog (after stories come out).
A wired writer who won't do an email interview--thats ironic!
Frankly, you need to adapt. Journalists have misquoted people for so long--and quoted them out of context that many people like to have their words on record.
I don't want someone taking half a sentence or paraphrasing me... Just too much risk.
Besides I have 10,000 people come to my blog every day--i don't need wired to talk to the tech industry.
Also, this is exactly how I would have this to you on the phone... You may not get the exact tone of my voice--but you get my overall tone. :)
What's really disturbing is that you would let two of the folks who know mike best walk away from the interview because you don't like email--horrible for the reader. Also, your stance confirms for folks like me (and maybe dave) that doing email only is safer.
Feel free to print this.... I will probably make a blog post from it myself. There is no off the record and there never was. :
WIRED journo won't do email interviews--ironic.
Reader Comments
(Page 2 of 2)22. I've worked as a journalist and now I work as a PR guy.
It would be disingenuous for Wired to present an email correspondence between you and their journalist as an "Interview." Emails simply are not interviews. Think about this - when was the last time you conducted or received a job "interview" over email? NEVER. You know why.
An email is a Q&A, and an interview is live (either on the phone, or in person).
That said, when people have asked me for an email "interview" I have never said no, because I know how busy people are and getting any answer from them is better than getting no answer at all (especially when I'm on deadline). Every time, however, I'm very upfront in telling the person that they should try to write in a manner that they speak, forget Strunk & White, etc. or else their answers may be "unlikely to be useable" (the actual phrase I use).
Email Q&A has been about 50% effective for me - CEOs of smaller companies tend to be very frank, whereas I could tell Michael Dell's people handled the email themselves, being careful to say plenty while saying nothing at all :-).
Nowadays, as a PR guy, I actually prefer to have the people I represent speak live rather do text, simply because I know it will be 100% more likely to make it into the story and 1000 times quicker. The key is that you must TRAIN your speakers to not f*** up in their interviews, which is harder than it seems sometimes (and Mark Cuban would be, to beat a dead horse, a prime example.
Posted at 6:01PM on Apr 24th 2007 by raffius_clay
23. I think journalists doing scripted interviews are the worst. Often on television you'll see an interview and the interviewer will be asking pre-scripted questions. Sometimes the person being interviewed will give an answer that hints at something interesting. Bad interviewers will just follow their script and ask the next question. A good interviewer will recognize a hint and explore the answer and ask more questions. This is what makes a good interviewer/journalist.
24. I always tend to do email interviews.
As a writer for a small -- but I might add growing ;) -- blog it is much easier to get a response from someone important and iconic if you send them a list of questions they can quickly answer, and you can always follow up after with some further questions.
That said, a phone interview is often useful to pull more information out of the interviewee.
25. Jason,
A couple responses. First, every reporter has their own individual style and preferences of interview techniques. I don't impose any one policy on any of them. Some tape record, some take notes, some use email, some don't. Etc. They all aim to be fair and accurate, and there's lots of ways to skin that cat.
Second, your readers may be interested in our bloggers' response to this post: Dylan Tweney and Fred Vogelstein himself.
Posted at 7:16PM on Apr 24th 2007 by Chris Anderson
26. Sorry, the URLs didn't show up on that last post. They are:
Dylan Tweney: http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/calacanis_wont_.html
Fred Vogelstein: http://blog.wired.com/business/2007/04/my_email_conver.html
Posted at 7:23PM on Apr 24th 2007 by Chris Anderson
27. Geez Chris, I can see directing people towards Vogelstein's account which includes the email thread in question, but why would you want anyone reading that sharp-tongued piece of drivel written -- very unprofessionally -- by Dylan Tweney? If anything, you should let people know when and if Mr. Tweney posts an apology.
Posted at 9:11PM on Apr 24th 2007 by Disappointed
28. Jason, you're absolutely right on this issue. I do the same thing with debt collectors rather than have taped phone conversations. Like the Bush Administration, they tend to lose transcripts, tapes, emails, hell, entire laptops. But if it's sent to me, it's on my server which is mirrored in two other locations. So self-protection works for both of us, not just one-way.
When you think about it, it's actually suspicious that an interviewer would not agree to email as the medium!
Posted at 12:09AM on Apr 25th 2007 by Zaine Ridling
29. I teach journalism and this is what I emailed to a student this week explaining why she should not interview someone by email.
The reason is that a email question is asking someone to make a statement. It has none of the immediacy of an interview and does not allow you to watch and/or listen for tone of voice and body language which often tell you as much as what someone actually says. The face to face and phone interview both allow you to develop the interview, clarifying and probing as you go. Simply, email interviews are seldom effective for anything except factual information.
Posted at 1:57AM on Apr 25th 2007 by Andrew Grant-Adamson
30. My name is Brian Boyko, and I'm a journalist.
Let me play devil's advocate here.
I can understand why Wired Magazine would not do e-mail interviews. It is because as journalists, we cannot readily accept e-mail interviews ourselves. Many people will have e-mails written by staff members instead of doing the interview themselves. In short, every J-school journalist told me that e-mail was not to be relied upon for an interview - and that at least a phone call where the person establishes that "Yes, I wrote and sent you that e-mail" was required to use e-mail material.
For some interviews, I -do- insist on e-mail communication but that's usually when something highly technical is involved and I want to make sure I've got it right. Even then, the initial interview is conducted via phone.
Phone conversations can be recorded for accuracy - I've got a device that will let me do so for a land line, I've got the ability to hook it up to a computer for my VoIP line, and if only I could figure out how to record from a cellphone my life would be complete.
There's also the tangible quality. If you can do the interview face-to-face, do that first. You pick up on subtle clues, know which questions to ask, etc. The phone is the next big thing.
Additionally, phone conversations are interesting in that something someone says can cause you to think of a question that you wouldn't have thought of otherwise. An interesting point or side-point that would add information to the article.
So if a Wired journalist won't do e-mail interviews, I say that's a plus for Wired's credibility.
Now, I will admit that -I've- been on the other side of the pen, and I've found it incredibly vexing to be misquoted. But in my case most of the misquotes were more intentional than anything else - and not so much "misquotes" as they were taking the words I did say out of context - sometimes badly so, twisting the meaning 180 degrees.
And if someone's out to do a hatchet job on you, doing it via e-mail won't protect you.
See if the Wired guy is interested in a compromise - to provide you with an MP3 file of the recorded phone conversation for your records, to ask to see your quotes - or better still, go down to Radio Shack, pick up an Olympus Digital Voice Recorder and a phone-line recorder interface and record the interview yourself. To CYA (I don't know the laws in your state) you need to inform him you're recording the conversation, but this should be absolutely no problem.
-- Brian Boyko
-- Editor, Network Performance Daily, and freelance contributor to HardOCP, Austin Business Journal, and CNN.
-- brian.boyko@netqos.com
Posted at 11:17AM on Apr 25th 2007 by Brian Boyko
31. [(I wonder what Chris Anderson if WIRED thinks of this issue since he is pushing the radical transparency thing).]
...You won't do phone interviews because you don't want to misquoted or have a journalist f-things up, but yet you can't even post a blog entry about the entire issue without a typo.
Journalists get paid, in part, to make things legible. Let them do their job (which includes making CEOs and the like uncomfortable on the phone to get the real story). And since you've yet to prove you're not typo-proof, I'd kindly suggest that you don't quit your day job and leave journalism up to, well, the journalists.
Posted at 6:32PM on Apr 27th 2007 by Adventure Agent
32. This minor skirmish might have important ramifications for the future of news as I describe in a post "Wired Magazine Kerfuffle: Interviewing protocols now being rewritten because Journalism failed to establish ethical guidelines" at http://thefutureofnews.com/2007/04/27/wired-magazine-kerfuffle-interviewing-protocols-now-being-rewritten-because-journalism-failed-to-establish-ethical-guidelines/
Posted at 10:40AM on Apr 28th 2007 by Steve Boriss
21. Jason - I'm so with you. I get way to many interview requests and can only really deal with it by email anyway since I don't want to burn my time on the phone.
For those of you out there that thing email responses are bogus, maybe you should rethink who you are interviewing!
Posted at 5:14PM on Apr 24th 2007 by Brad Feld