Interview Postmortem

As some of our other classmates have noted happened in their experience, I also began engaging in postmortem analysis of my interview with Samantha immediately following the recording session. We discussed together what we thought our strengths and weaknesses were as interviewers, as well as the woes of outside noise. We recorded inside the conference room at The Red & Black and found that every car that passed and, in particular, every motorcycle that passed made a ton of outside noises that were ridiculously loud. Thankfully, we realized this early on and discovered a solution — we would pause immediately upon hearing an engine approaching or would repeat comments if necessary.

During the editing process, I noticed that I used a lot of confirming sounds like “uh-huh” and “yes” that were very distracting and that couldn’t be removed from my final product because they were in the middle or at the tail end of sentences, followed quickly by the continuation of what I had been listening to. In the future, I will be more mindful of this during interviews. Another thing that I noticed, thanks in part to a very helpful comment from our professor, is that my voice is a bit childish. I’ve been working on recording myself speaking in a lower tone, playing around with the way I speak to hopefully come up with a more natural sounding, adult voice.

In terms of questions that I wished I had asked, I wished that I had known ahead of time what Samantha was most passionate about. I didn’t give myself a lot of time to prepare for the conversation. In some ways, that made it more natural. In others, it limited my ability to ask deeper questions about radio, as it isn’t a medium that I’ve worked in extensively. I also wish that I had asked Samantha more about why she seems to prefer college radio over talk radio and differences set those two apart in her mind.

Interview Postmortem

I began engaging in postmortem analysis of my interview with Shelby immediately after leaving our recording session. My thoughts going into it had been of possible problems with the technology, either in picking up the audio or saving it properly. Fortunately, there was not catastrophic equipment failure, but I think it threw me off somewhat in the moment. Besides preoccupation with equipment, the purpose of producing audio for a podcast made the conversation feel somewhat stilted in order to avoid interjecting unwanted sounds into the recording. No confirming words, not a lot of back and forth, other than head nodding and such. It did not feel completely natural.

While editing for the audio pod, there were some questions I wished I had asked. I wished, for instance, that I had asked Shelby to describe the sights and sounds of the locations she visited, beyond noting their relations to literary pieces. I also wished I had asked her how they compared to mental images she had beforehand and if the realities changed her memories of the stories.

Looking at the tips given by CNN and CJR was somewhat reassuring. In relation to CNN tips: 1. I did ask mainly open-ended questions; 2. I did not interrupt silences; and 3. I did invite the last word. In relation to CJR tips: 1. I had prepared myself by reading Shelby’s story of travel to Edinburg, Scotland and had searched the internet for stories about literary travel; 2. I had prepared a list of questions, which I committed to memory but did not reference during the interview; 3. And again, silences were not averted with pointless interjections. On balance, it was a good learning experience. My performance was probably not great nor was it terrible. I thank Shelby for providing interesting material. And I really liked creating a podcast. I would definitely tackle it again, hopefully more confident with the technology, and doing a little better next time!

Voices – Franklin’s piece on Shirley Jackson

For this analysis, I chose “The Novelist Disguised as a Housewife,” excerpt from Ruth Franklin’s biography of Shirley Jackson.

Voices, in order of their inclusion in the article, are as follows:

Shirley Jackson herself (subject), in reply to the question of her occupation, which she stated as “writer,” and at other points in the piece such as in a letter to her parents, letter to a friend, and her thoughts in general about squeezing in writing time while presenting herself as just a mother and housewife with a penchant for writing.
The hospital clerk (local community) who determined that a more acceptable response than “writer” would be housewife.
The characters she created in cartoons (fictitious extension of subject’s imagination), such as an onlooker to a woman dragging her husband by the hair. “I understand she’s trying to have both a marriage and career,” the cartoon character says.
The wife of a writer (closely involved with subject) who was said to have been incredulous that a writer would “allow” his wife to have a child.
Midge Decter, friend (closely involved) and later editor, who commented that “it was the men who needed looking after … They had many demands.” She also noted that having kids was “not part of the bohemian life.”
Jackson’s husband (Hyman) as depicted in her cartoons, being detached from demands and needs of family and instead expecting to be served.
Hyman in his own words (closely involved with subject) about having kids, “Bring ‘em to me when they can read and write,” and with regard to his own needs, “I did three paragraphs at once and it tired me out.”
Two year old son describing Daddy as “man who sits in chair reading.”
Spock (national figure), words taken from his child-care manual
Her children who described aspects of their upbringing; their third child, Sarah, who said, “She was afraid she would lose us,” as explanation for Jackson keeping them in her watchful eye; her son, Laurence, who recalled her quirky, playful ways.
Friend of daughter, Sarah, who recalled that Jackson could be a tough disciplinarian
Another writer, Alice Munro (likely a friend of Jackson’s) who spoke of having the same constraints on writing time that Jackson experienced.
Kit Foster, a friend (closely involved) who recalled Jackson leaving a game of Monopoly to write a short story.
Betty Friedan, feminist writer (national figure), who saw Jackson as selling herself (and by extension, other women) short, by making it seem as though she was dashing off her literary pieces between her household chores.
General admiring tone of fan mail received (generalized others as fans).

There are many voices present in this short piece, giving us a rich picture of the life and persona of Shirley Jackson as well as the context of the times. Interesting reading … and eye-opening to see the number of voices that are included and how they are all woven together!

Module 6: Reporting

Introduction:

The key to this course, as you’ve probably discovered already, is getting out into the world and getting people to talk to you. Usually it’s a pretty straightforward process, although you will inevitably run across some jerks out there. In this module we’ll strategize about how to select, plan, and execute interviews.

Learning objectives:

Develop plans for reporting
Conduct interviews
Double-check facts
The ethics of interviewing

Steps to completion:

Background:

CNN guide to interviewing
CJR art of interviewing
Take a story from the Don van Natta list or elsewhere and make a list of all the people whose voices appear in the story and what role they play in the writing (e.g., subject, closely involved with subject, local community context, national/global context). Post a summary of the story and your list in the Module 6 category with the tag “voices” by. Oct. 3.
Consider your audio interview with your classmate in light of the CNN and Columbia Journalism Review readings. What questions do you wish you had asked? What worked well with your approach and what could you have done better? Write this up in a short blog post with the tag [spelling corrected] “interview postmortem” by Oct. 3.
Read “The Accidental Ethicist” to discuss Thursday, Oct. 6. You may need to be on campus to access; here’s an alternate URL.
Finish all (minimum of 5) interviews for your profile story and send transcripts to me along with research as a reporting package in Dropbox Paper by Oct. 7.

Reflective:

Class discussion Oct. 4: Interviewing basics
Class discussion Oct. 6: Finding the best voices
Class discussion Oct. 11: Interviews and ethics
Class discussion Oct. 13: Work time for profile story

Exploratory

Profile story due by Oct. 14.