One of the most important skills each journalist needs to develop is how to conduct successful interviews. There’s nothing quite like getting primary source material for a story. Even if you’re a photographer, a salesperson, a graphic artist, or a webmaster you need to be able to get information from folks in order to do your work.
So, here’s a brief guide to conducting interviews. It’s actually a PDF of a presentation that I often give, so the explanatory part is missing that I would share out verbally. But, you’ll get the basic gist of things here.
One caveat – it’s Hawkeye/Tempo policy that in every interview before the interview starts, the person conducting the interview must 1) clearly identify him/herself, 2) clearly identify that he/she is a staff member of the Hawkeye, and 3) clearly state that the information gathered in the interview may be used in a story to be published by the Hawkeye/Tempo. This is mandatory policy.
Here’s the PDF of the basic interviewing technique presentation.