In a recent column, Howard Kurtz raised the suggestion that the face-to-face interview is essentially dead.
”In the digital age, some executives and commentators are saying they will respond only by e-mail, which allows them to post the entire exchange if they feel they have been misrepresented, truncated or otherwise disrespected. And some go further, saying, You want to know what I think? Read my blog.
Jason Calcanis, chief executive of Weblogs Inc., says on his blog that “journalists have been burning subjects for so long with paraphrased quotes, half quotes, and misquotes that I think a lot of folks (especially ones who don’t need the press) are taking an email only interview policy.”
Veteran magazine editor Jeff Jarvis adds at his BuzzMachine blog: “Are interviews about information or gotcha moments? . . . Isn’t it better to get considered, complete answers?”
There’s a lot of food for thought here from both a journalistic and a media training perspective. How do you verify who you’re actually ‘talking’ to? If physical description is important, how do you know the 53 year-old woman you’re talking to isn’t a spoofing 15-year old boy?
Creative spellers, the less educated and non-native English writers may look dumb in an email exchange, unless reporters “clean up” their quotes, a long and dishonorable journalistic tradition. And far from any control advantage, the spokesperson may be actually be at a disadvantage by putting thoughts in writing he could more easily back away from in a verbal interview.
For public relations pros, often acutely aware of how little control they actually have over their message, email interviews pose another control challenge. If you’re aware of an email interview, will you hover over someone’s shoulder or watch/jump in on another screen? More importantly, anyone in a corporation or government structure with an email address can now be subject to an email query from the press which becomes an interview. People want to be helpful, but putting their own answers in writing without the knowledge or approval of management and public relations staff can be disasterous.
Certainly, as news organizations ruthless trim staffs, the do-more-with-less pressure means journalists will be reluctant to leave the office for even the most critical face-to-face, so phoners and email ‘interviews’ will become even more important. (Smart publicists will continue to push for press tours that bring their spokesperson and product into the office and into the journalist’s face.)
Face-to-face interviews will continue in many settings, such as all kinds of television (no one wants to read email off another screen or have to hear the reporter’s deadly voice-over) trade shows and conferences, press tours, investigative reporting (when the reporter actually leaves his office to track down a story) and for politicians and others who need to show sincerity and thus, as Calcanis puts it, “need the press.”
But email interviews are perilously close to pure public relations opportunies. I recently sold an international airline magazine on my doing a story on a Japanese company’s innovative female CEO, a phenomenon even more unusual in Japan than here. I’d met the woman and spoken with her briefly.
But the company publicist told me she was uncomfortable communicating in English and would only agree to do an email interview. I initially refused, concerned I wouldn’t know who was on the other end of the line and that I would be getting canned answers crafted by the publicist. I wanted to do a face-to-face, or at least a phone interview, because as Kurtz says, “When you see someone’s expressions or listen to someone’s voice, you get a sense of the person that words on a screen lack.”
We went back and forth for a couple of weeks, until it all blew up when the CEO resigned, with my story departing with her.
