Bad Interviewers

We all know them. These are the people who ask the most painful and obvious questions you'd just rather not be around to hear, or do so in such a commanding way like they're on stage or something. They're known to pass the recorder from their own mouth directly in front of the coaches and athletes. My question for you all is, can you even stand to be around them? I, for one, cannot. If I have the time, I'll wait to take my own shot.

 

Also Known As: 99 percent of TV journalists ...

 

Hmmm...somebody here likes himself a whole bunch.

 

Exactly ... "At least I'm not as bad as THOSE guys"

 

Well, everybody has their style.

Some interviewers may seem bad to us, but if they get the quotes they need, then it works for them.

 

I figured this would be about those sad sacks who come in for a job interview with the personality and enthusiasm of a dishrag.

 

yeah, but what works doesn't always seem exactly ethical to me. I've been around guys who basically give the whole "you did this, you did that, you dominated in this way," schtick, and then follow it up with "tell me about that."
just seems lazy to me. ask of fuckin question instead of spoon-fead them the answer you want.

 

Actually, I'm not too big a fan of myself...I dunno. Maybe I'm just a little burnt right now. It's 1 a.m., I'm wide awake after a killer multi-day assignment, and I think I just saw some scantily clad lassies traipse through the hotel lobby. But I could just be hallucinating.

 

I think that's part of the problem. From my experience, there is little being done in J-schools on how to interview, so a lot of these kids come out and conduct interviews like they see on TV, which leads to very poor quality work. If you were to try to insert stuff from most TV interviews into a print story, you wouldn't get very far. The same thing happens, then, when you try to work a TV-style interview into print.

 

Bingo.

The best questions are never written down on your notepad before you start an interview. They are the ones that come as a result of listening and immediately evaluating what an interviewee has said, and then following up on that. And once you develop that skill, you still need great preparation to be ready to use that skill.