Interviewing in the Digital Age

       This chapter came just at the right time.  I've been wondering if I would be able to use an email interview for my class article but wasn't sure if it's really acceptable, and the chapter answered all the questions I had.  Any interviews I need to do for The Comment can usually be done with someone that's right on campus, but for my news feature for class I want to do something I'm really interested in so I might need to try to get someone that's harder to reach or too busy for an in-person interview.  The book said that nothing is better than an in-person interview pretty much because it puts them on the spot and you can make it more personal and interact with them, and that's exactly what I figured would make an email interview maybe not good enough to use for a story.  

       A perfect example of how emailing can take longer to get the answers, just like the book said, is when I wrote my first article this year.  I emailed both the dean of Math and Science and the dean of Social Sciences and Humanities to see if they would be available for an interview or to just email me their answers to my questions, just two days before my deadline.  One of the deans emailed me back pretty quick and was available for an interview the next day, while the other one took longer to respond and ended up emailing me the answers a day after my deadline.  I was still able to write a good story with quotes from just one of them, and the quotes from the in-person interview were better quality anyway.

       The info in the chapter about how to do your in-person interview is really helpful too.  When I interviewed the chief of campus police it felt like he didn't have much to say on the subject, so I let there be pauses when I caught up on my notes and he would add to what he was saying, and it was usually more useful than his original answer.

       I might take another shot at an email interview for my news feature, but I want to use the style that the book suggested, one question at a time.  I don't know how I could do that without sounding like a douche so I'll ask Cope for tips on that.