The first step of any good journalistic interview is to select the right interview source for your story. This means that you should do your research and find an interview subject who is knowledgeable about the topic for which you need information and who would be relevant to the scope and focus of your particular story.
It’s important to recall that journalists must avoid potential conflicts of interest—whether real or perceived. If those conflicts are impossible to avoid, journalists must be transparent about them. When it comes to conducting interviews, this means that you should not interview someone with whom you have a personal relationship (such as your mom, a friend, or your lawyer) or with whom you may have another conflict of interest (such as someone who works at a company that competes with yours, or someone who belongs to the same club you do). Instead, your sources should be able to offer independent insight and not feel any pressure due to their relationship to you.
Every journalistic story includes information from a variety of different sources, so it is important to consider how your interview sources will contribute different elements to your story. What will one source bring to the table that another cannot? What will this source’s expertise add to the information you are collecting? What perspective is missing? What voice is not being heard?
As you create a list of potential interview sources for your story, actively seek out a diversity of voices, perspectives, and identities. You don’t want to only interview sources who share similar experiences and viewpoints about an issue, because this limits the scope of your story and thus provides a disservice to your audience. Instead, seek out potential sources with different life experiences, backgrounds, perspectives, and areas of expertise. Including a diverse array of sources will make your story stronger, more dynamic, and more inclusive. (Additionally, just because you interview someone does not mean you have to use the material they give you. However, giving them the opportunity to share insight is part of the job of being a journalist.)
Once you have identified a few potential sources for the story you are reporting, it is time to reach out to those sources to request an interview. Keep in mind that when you are requesting an interview from a source, you are requesting their time—time away from their lives, work, and families. That is time that they would normally spend on a task of their own choosing. As you craft an interview request, make it clear both why this source should give you their time and why you and your audience would benefit from their time.
You can request an interview with a potential source in a variety of different ways—primarily in-person, over the phone, or via email. However, when you reach out to a source, always be polite and professional. Include all the essential information that a source would need to know about you and your story. In a friendly and polite phone call or email, briefly introduce yourself, the topic of your story, and the angle of your interview. Give the interview source your name and title, and tell them about the outlet you are reporting for. If you are writing for a student publication or for a class project, make that clear. Explain whether the eventual story will be published, and if so, where. (It is good to assume that all stories will eventually be published. Even if you are just doing a class project, you might stumble into a great story that interests local, regional, and national media. You might be surprised by how often that happens.)
Then, give the source an overview of your story and the topic of the interview you hope to conduct with them. Provide them with an estimate of the amount of their time you are asking for. (This should be based on the amount of information you are hoping to get from this interview, as well as how many questions you plan to ask this source. Some interviews are much longer, or shorter, than others.) Be sure to let your interview subject know how you intend to conduct the interview: in person, over the phone, over video chat, and so on. It is helpful to give them options instead of dictating the medium.
However, it is always best to interview sources in person, whenever possible, because doing so helps a reporter get to know that source a bit better, pick up on body language and other non-verbal cues, and foster a stronger relationship with the source. When an in-person interview is not possible, perhaps because the reporter and the source live thousands of miles apart, a video or phone interview is an appropriate substitution. Email interviews are almost never a good method for interviewing a source, in large part because communicating via email makes follow-up questions difficult and allows interview sources to practice or prepare canned responses. Put another way, use email as a last resort for conducting the interview.
Once you have made all of this information clear, try to schedule the interview. Provide a time frame by which you hope to speak to this source, and suggest a few potential dates and times for your interview. Be flexible with timing. Because you are asking for your source’s time, it is always best to be open-ended with your own schedule to accommodate the source’s schedule. Finally, politely thank the source for their time and provide multiple ways for them to contact you with a response, such as your phone number and email address.
If you are contacting a source via email, the tone of your entire email should be respectful and professional. Call your source by their name or title, depending on their profession. Use professional language, and avoid slang. Do not be overly personal. If you send an email request, it is crucial that you offer a clear and concise subject line, such as “Media Request: Working on a story about X.” Remember that you are asking this person for the favor of their time, and you must craft an email that makes clear how their time will be used and why they should give you that time. With emails in particular, try to keep them as short as possible while including all of these crucial details. A long email may seem intimidating amid a busy day and is thus more likely to be ignored.
Finally, your interview request is just that: an interview request. Sources might respond to your request to ask for more information or detail about the interview. If they do so, share that with them. But an interview request is not an interview itself. If a source asks you to provide them with a list of the interview questions that you plan to ask, or if they ask you for a draft of the story you are planning to write, always say no. It is unethical to allow sources prior review of your journalism, and it also complicates your reporting process, as sources may seek to tweak or edit aspects of your draft or adjust their own answers based on what you have written. Allowing your source to review a list of interview questions before the interview provides the source an opportunity to practice their responses, create memorized answers, or prepare a way to skirt or avoid your questions. If your source requests these things, it is best to just say no.
Ideally, your interview sources will be happy to speak with you, but this isn’t always the case. Some sources may be nervous about being interviewed and reluctant to accept an interview request. Your sources may also be busy or difficult to get in touch with in the first place. Just because they might not respond to your request for an interview quickly or immediately does not mean that you should give up on interviewing them.
To be a strong journalist is to be a persistent one. You might have to contact a potential source many times in order to get a response to your interview request, and you should do so politely and creatively. Instead of simply sending the same request over and over every day (and potentially annoying your source and making them even less likely to respond), try contacting that source through a variety of different mediums—such as via voicemail, email, text message, and in-person. Use all of the contact methods you have available, such as both their work email address and a personal email address. Explain to this source why your speaking to them is important and why you selected them as a key interview source. If this explanation doesn’t motivate the source to say yes, try again with a different angle. Remember that you chose this source because they provide important information or perspective to your story. Keep in mind that you are doing this to serve your audience, and don’t be afraid to be politely persistent.
At the same time, don’t rely too heavily on a single source. Always have back-up sources in mind, such as a second expert whose research, while perhaps not as closely tied to the story as your first-choice expert, is still relevant to a story you intend to write. If your first-choice sources don’t respond in a timely fashion, start reaching out to your back-up sources even while you continue to reach out to the first-choice sources. Waiting too long for your ideal response can cause you to miss your deadline.
Before you reach out to a potential source, do your research about this person, their experience, and their expertise. Get to know everything you can about that person and what makes them relevant to your story. Apply that knowledge to your interview request, and be respectful to your source throughout the entire interview process.
The way you arrange and conduct an interview has an impact on the results of that interview. If you are rude or unprofessional, or if you clearly did not do your research, your sources may become uncomfortable with you, limit the amount of information they share with you, end an interview, or refuse to speak to you. Think about each interview source as a potentially recurring source of information that you might return to throughout your journalistic career, and treat them in a way that fosters a long-term professional relationship.
Pick strong sources who are knowledgeable about the topic for which you need information and relevant to the scope and focus of your story. Don’t interview people with whom you have a potential conflict of interest—whether real or perceived.
When requesting an interview, briefly introduce yourself, your outlet, your story, and the medium and time estimate of your interview. Be clear, direct, succinct, and professional.
Sometimes, sources are busy, tough to contact, or averse to doing interviews. Be persistent, and follow up creatively and politely to explain why a source is key to your reporting.
Do your homework. Before you ever reach out to a potential source, get to know everything you can about that person and what makes them relevant to your story.