Newspaper Reporting And Correspondence A Manual For Reporters C

Chapter 11

Chapter 113,512 wordsPublic domain

The impossibility of using a notebook or writing down a man's words in an interview seriously complicates the task of interviewing. Some reporters train themselves until they are able to remember their victim's words long enough to get outside and write them down. Others are satisfied with getting the ideas and the spirit of what is said together with the man's manner of talking. A few characteristic mannerisms thrown in with a true report of his ideas will make any speaker believe that you have quoted him exactly. Whichever method is pursued, the reporter must always be fair and try to tell the readers of the paper the man's true ideas. The exigencies of the case give the reporter greater liberty than in quoting from a speech but he must not abuse his liberty.

The success of an interview depends very largely upon the way in which a reporter approaches the man whom he wishes to interview. It is never well to trust to the inspiration of the moment to start the conversation. The reporter must know exactly what he wishes to have the man say before he approaches him and must already have framed his questions so as to draw out the answers that he wishes. People are never interviewed except for a purpose and that purpose should suggest the reporter's first question. No matter how willing the man is to tell what he thinks he will seldom begin talking until the reporter asks him a definite question to help him in putting his thoughts into words. All of this should be considered beforehand. The reporter should have outlined a definite campaign and have a series of questions which he wishes to ask. If he has written the questions out beforehand, the task becomes an easier one--he merely fills in the answers on his list later and has the interview in better form than if he had tried to trust entirely to his memory. To be sure, the questions may open up unexpected lines of thought and he may get more than he went for, but he must have his questions ready for use as soon as each new line is exhausted. A skilled reporter frames the interview himself and keeps the result entirely in his own hands through the campaign that he has outlined beforehand. Unless he knows exactly what he wants to get, a wary victim may lead him off upon unimportant facts and in the end tell him nothing that his paper has sent him to get. A reporter must keep the reins of an interview in his own possession.

A good reporter takes great care in his manner of addressing a man whom he is to interview. A well-known newspaper follows the rule of asking its reporters never to do what a gentleman would not do. A reporter who is trying to interview must always be a gentleman and must not ask questions that a gentleman would not ask. If the victim is a prominent man of great personality it is not hard to follow this rule--in fact, it is impossible to get the interview by any other method of approach. But when one is trying to interview a person of humbler station, the case is different. It is very easy then to fall into a habit of demanding information and turning the interview into an inquisition. But the reporter who keeps his attitude as a gentleman gets more real facts even when his victim is of the most humble social status. Therefore, never approach your victim as if he were a witness and you a cross-questioning lawyer. Do not say: "See here, you know more about it than that," and thus try to force unwilling information from him. Go at him in a more round-about way and lead him to give you the facts unwittingly perhaps.

A young reporter often feels an impulse to become too personal with the man whom he is interviewing. He must always remember that he is not there for a friendly chat but as a representative of a newspaper, sent to get concise facts or opinions. This attitude must be maintained even with the humblest persons. Any desire to sympathize, criticize, or advise must be checked at the very start. The point of view must always be kept.

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Although the main difference between writing interview stories and reporting speeches lies in the very act of getting the quotations and words of the speaker, there are certain aspects in which the writing of an interview story is different. The actual form of the two stories is almost identical and yet there is a tone in the interview story that is lacking in the report of a speech. This may be called the personal tone.

The very name of the speaker obviously plays a much larger part in the interview story than in the speech report. We may be more interested in what a man says in a public discourse than we are in the man, but when we interview a man we want his opinions not for themselves so much as because they are his opinions. An interview with the President on the tariff is not necessarily interesting in the new ideas that it brings out, for we have many other ways of knowing the President's opinions on the tariff question; but the interview is worth printing because every one is interested in reading anything that the President says, although he may have read the same thing many times before. A man is seldom interviewed unless he is of some prominence--that is why he is interviewed, and so in the resulting story his name plays a very important part. In fact, his name is usually the feature of the story; most interview stories begin directly with the name of the man whose statements are quoted.

Although a man may be interviewed simply because of his prominence and popularity, there is usually another reason for the interview. We are interested not only in hearing him say something but we wish to hear him say something on a certain topic. The interview thus has a timeliness, a reason for existence. Since this timeliness is the reason for printing a certain man's statements, the reporter's account must indicate that timeliness near the beginning. That is, the first sentence of an interview story must not only tell who was interviewed and the gist of what he said, but it must tell why he said it. The interview must be connected with the rest of the day's news. This comes out very definitely in the custom which many newspapers have of printing the opinions of many prominent men in connection with any important event. Perhaps it is because we wish to know their opinions on the subject or perhaps it is simply because we are glad to have a chance to hear them talk--at any rate many editors make any great event an excuse for a series of interviews. This is illustrated by the opinions of the various labor leaders that were printed with the story of the recent confession of the McNamara brothers. In such a case, the reporter must make the reason for the interview his starting point in the report and must indicate very plainly why the man was interviewed.

This idea of timeliness is very often carried to the extent of making the interview merely a denial or an assertion from the mouth of a well-known man. There may be an upheaval in Wall Street. Immediately the papers print an interview in which some prominent financier denies or asserts that he is at the bottom of the upheaval. Naturally the report of the interview begins with the very words of the denial or the assertion. Very often a man when interviewed refuses to say anything on the subject. The fact that he has nothing to say does not mean that the interview is not worth reporting. In fact, that refusal to speak may be the most effective thing that he could say. The reporter begins by telling that his man had nothing to say on the subject and ends by telling what he should have said or what his refusal to speak probably means,--if the paper is not too scrupulous in such matters. At any rate, the denial or assertion or refusal to speak becomes the starting point of the report and furnishes the excuse for the interview story. The expanded remarks that follow the lead are of course important but they are not so important as the primary expression of opinion that the reporter went for.

The personal element in interviewing may be carried to an extreme extent. The man who is interviewed may so far overshadow the importance of what he says that the report of the interview becomes almost a sketch of the man himself. That is, the report is filled with human interest. The quotations are interspersed with action and description. We are told how the man acted when he said each individual thing. His appearance, attitude, expression, and surroundings become as important as his words and are brought into the report as vividly as possible. Such an interview may become almost large enough to be used as a special feature story for the Sunday edition, but when the human interest is limited to a comparatively subordinate position the report still keeps its character as an interview news story. Such a thing may be illustrated from the daily press:

After all has been said about interviewing, the one thing that a reporter must remember is that an interview story is at best rather dry and everything that he can do to increase the interest will improve the interview. But all of this must be done with absolute fairness to the speaker and great truthfulness in the quotation of his ideas and opinions.

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To come to the technical form of the interview story, we find that there are very nearly as many possible beginnings as in the case of the report of a speech. The interview story must begin with a lead that tells who was interviewed, when, and where, what he said (in a quotation or an indirect summary), and why he was interviewed. This is like the lead of a speech report in every particular except in the timeliness--the occasion for a speech is seldom mentioned in the lead, but a reporter usually tells at once why he interviewed the man whose words he quotes.

=1. Speaker Beginning.=--The very purpose behind interviewing makes the so-called speaker beginning most common. It is almost an invariable rule that the report of an interview must begin with the man's name unless what he says is of greater importance than his name--which is seldom.

The simplest form of the speaker beginning is the one in which the speaker's name is followed directly by a summary of what he said, as:

Another kind of speaker beginning may devote most of the lead to the explanation of the reason for the interview, giving the briefest possible summary of what was said: Thus:

One step further brings us to the entire exclusion of the result of the interview from the lead. In this case the reason for the interview occupies the entire lead and we must read part of the second paragraph to find what the man said; thus:

It is to be noted that in each of the above leads the speaker's name is always accompanied by a word or two telling who he is and why he was interviewed. Furthermore the reporter himself has no more place in the lead than if he were reporting a speech--his existence and the part he played in getting the interview are strictly ignored.

=2. Summary Beginning.=--There are two common ways of beginning an interview story with a summary. First, the lead may begin with a _that_-clause which embodies the gist of the interview; this is like the _that_-clause beginning of the report of a speech; thus:

Secondly the summary beginning is used in the case of an interview that is a denial or an assertion by the man interviewed. The lead begins with a clause or a participial phrase embodying the substance of the interview, and the name of the speaker is made the subject of a verb of denying or asserting; thus:

=3. Quotation Beginning.=--Many reports of interviews begin with a direct quotation. The logic of this is that the expression of opinion is, in some cases, of more interest than the name of the man who expressed the opinion. Sometimes the name of the speaker is not considered worth mentioning and in that case a direct quotation is the only advisable beginning; thus:

Sometimes a short quotation is used at the beginning of the lead very much as a title is used in a speech report; thus:

If the quotation at the beginning consists of only one sentence the name of the speaker may be run into the same paragraph; thus:

However if the quotation at the beginning contains more than one sentence it is best to paragraph the quotation separately and leave the name of the speaker until the second paragraph; thus:

=4. Human Interest Beginning.=--This is a designation devised to cover a multitude of beginnings. A human interest interview may begin with a quotation, a summary, a name, or an action. The aim is necessarily toward unconventionality and the form of the lead is left to the originality of the reporter. A few examples may illustrate what is meant by the human interest beginning:

After what has been said about the body of a speech report, there is little more to be said about the body of an interview story. The same rules apply in both cases. The body of the report should contain as much direct quotation as possible. However nothing less than a sentence should be quoted--that is, every quotation should be a complete sentence, with indirect explanation. Whenever "Said the speaker" or "Mr. Brown continued" or any similar expression is worked into the direct quotation it should always be placed at the end of the sentence; never begin a quotation in this way:--Mr. Jones continued, "Furthermore I would say, etc." In the same way, when a paragraph contains both direct and indirect quotation, the direct quotation should be placed at the beginning. Whenever it is possible, construct solid paragraphs of quotation, and solid paragraphs of summary. The report as a whole must have coherence and a logical sequence; for this a limited amount of indirect quotation may be used to fill in the gaps in the logic of the direct quotation.

According to the usage of the best newspapers of to-day the reporter must never be brought into the report of an interview. His existence must never be mentioned although every reader knows that some reporter secured the interview. In the old days reporters delighted in bringing themselves into their stories as "representatives of the press" or "a reporter for the Dispatch," but that practice has gone the way of the reporter's leather-bound notebook. The interview may be told satisfactorily without a mention of the reporter; hence newspaper usage has put a ban on his appearance in his story.

GROUP INTERVIEWS

We have said that a man is seldom interviewed without a reason; there is always a timeliness in interviewing. Any unusual event of broad importance becomes an excuse for the editor to print the opinion of some prominent man on some phase of the event. Sometimes the event is of such importance that the editor wishes to print the opinions of several men on the subject; or more than one prominent man may be involved in the affair and the public may wish to hear the opinions of every one involved. In such a case when several men are interviewed in regard to the same event it is considered rather useless and ineffective to print their interviews separately and the several interview stories are gathered together into one story and arranged in such a way that they may be compared. There are several ways of doing this.

If the case or event is very well known, a lead or summary of the several interviews is considered unnecessary and the words of the various men are grouped together under a single headline. This may be illustrated by the interviews that were printed after the confessions of the McNamara brothers of Los Angeles in the recent dynamiting case. The _Wisconsin State Journal_ may be taken as representative. This paper printed the statements of twelve prominent men interested in the case in a three-column box under a long head; thus: