"follow their lead and ask questions based on the discovery"

This is probably the best advice to give. I recently finished a documentary (the trailer for which can be found here) and this statement alone is what got me two really great interviews. My other interviewer didn't quite know to do this and wanted to stick by the set questions, but I was able to get a more "organic" interview by just letting the interviewee tell her story.

ocdude

I've been a professional journalist for four years now, and I'm still not sure I know how to ask a question. ;)

But they're absolutely right about the open-ended questions. You never want just a "yes" or "no", and some of the best stuff you'll get, which you probably weren't even counting on, can come through those follow-up questions.

drjayphd

I'm a Southerner, and I was raised to be polite. Unfortunately, being polite has cost me some good interviews. Not that we all need to be bloodthirsty ambush journalists, but sometimes, you just have to be willing to ask a tough question. (Just do it politely.) If the interviewee gets mad, well, that's just gonna happen.

Also, no "How does it feel?" questions. There's impact in specificity. Instead of "How does it feel to win the big game?" ask "Who was hardest to block?" or "How did you get around the offensive lineman on that third-down play?"

Peabdog

I'm in internal communications. I interview 4-5 people a week for my company's various publications. I've found two types of people who are difficult to interview, the overly outgoing (executive types) and the solidly introverted (sometimes found in IT, operations).

The tips provided by Director Tom are extremely helpful for interviewing the introverts, but I've found with those more comfortable in an interview setting, the key is to keep them on topic.

This is especially important because these are precisely the people who won't give you a ton of their time to begin with. They're also the people least likely to really open up in an interview. If you're not careful, you'll end up with an interview that sounds like it was written by a 50s-era propaganda writer.

chadcrawford

I'm actually doing my first important interview this week for my a multimedia presentation in my photojournalism course, and I found some helpful things in this article: [mediastorm.org] .

One of the things that seemed most important, but I had not thought about before, not having done an interview, was to make sure that the interviewee qualifies their statements. So really make sure your questions are open for them to tell a story, or at least make it so that it can be edited that way.

cbotwell

Here's one more I learned from a radio talk-show host. Sometimes, if your subject isn't exactly an extrovert, you can use a non-threatening tack to get him to open up. Instead of "How does your company plan to continue growing in a soft economy?" say, "You know, it seems like every day you read something else about how soft our economy is." You might have to do some more work to pull the pertinent facts out, but that no-pressure technique can sometimes loosen the lips of even the quietest subject. Get him talking, then maybe loosen him up more with some self-deprecating humor, and he might turn into a chatterbox.

Peabdog