Interviews are an essential building block for just about every news story, so it’s obviously important to know how to conduct a good one. Most interviewing advice comes in the form of tips and hints, like these dos and don’ts from…
How far will you go to protect the identity of sources who give you information on the condition that you not reveal their names? If you haven’t thought about it, you should. Every reporter eventually runs into a story so…
What could be more basic than a profile story, right? Yet, Sara Jackson a reporter and editor for UPI says they’re harder to write well than you may think. “Even with profiles, it’s important to have a news hook —…
How real are class-based reporting assignments? Karl Idsvoog, an associate professor at Kent State University, tries to make his assignments as real as possible. “Journalism students don’t learn to play hardball by playing softball,” he writes in the most recent…
Reporters do it every day. They talk to people “across differences” as Poynter’s Kenny Irby likes to say. But reporters don’t always do a good job of exploring those differences for the audience to tell richer stories. “If you can…
The best stories are almost always include great interviews, and ABC’s Diane Sawyer is well known for her interview style. “My husband likes to say television interviews are performances masquerading as conversations,” says Sawyer with a smile. But those “performances”…
Too many stories depend almost entirely on officials for information and sound bites. Watch a newscast or read a news site on any given day and notice who gets to talk. Are most of them people with titles and business…
People who have lost relatives or friends in a disaster are often the first target of journalists seeking to report on the event. How can journalists do their job of covering breaking news and informing the public, while showing sensitivity…
The interview is one of the most basic building blocks of journalism. It sounds obvious, but reporters have to talk to people to learn what’s really going on. And journalists need to include people’s voices in their stories to make…
The best advice I’ve seen lately on how to do better interviews can be summed up in those two words: Pay attention. That may be easier said than done if you’re shooting your own video, but it’s critically important. Once…
