Tutorial 6: Principal to Interview

In today's post, we are going to talk about principals of interview. In our lesson, we learned about there are 4 principles of interview as like: Research, Rapport, Question and Listening. We will discuss on this four things.

So for research, before every interview, we need to do some homework as like looking the basic information of the interviewee and we have to really do some detailed research on the topics that we are going to talk on. Interviewing is a way for us journalist to get information from. Interviewing is like looking for more additional information for the things that we already had. For example, the one we interview might have a very bad past. So we have to be careful when we are interviewing them by looking through their personal biography and looking at their past. For another example, we wanted to do a piece on a very rich lady who have a good career behind her. So before it we will already have some information so by interviewing, we will get information that is more precise from the lady.

Next up is Rapport. Rapport is said that we as journalist or normal humans should have empathy towards people who we are in communicating with. When we are interviewing someone which is in pain, we should not just blindly ask them about how they are feeling. Of course they will feel sad and bad but we must know that they are suffering in the depth of their heart. For example, MH370 event had been 4 months from now and nothing had been found. And being a reporter, we must change the way of us asking question from "Your family is still missing, how do you feel" to "I'm sorry to hear for your lost. How are you feeling?". The first one is like too straight where people will think of the loved once. But in the second one, they might think of them but they will feel better if they know that you have empathy.

The third one is that Question. Every interview is impossible to go on without a set of question list. Before going to an interview, prepare a set of question based on what you had found out and try and imagine the answer from the people. You will find out a lot of things whether that question will be offending them or not, or you will also find out that that question is open-ended or close-ended. Being in an interview, the question is better to be Open-ended than close-ended as if you asked close-ended question you will not get more detailed answer. There are also the direct question and the intrusive question. Direct question, as like it said, it should be direct. Directly straight to the point. These type of question is frequently ask by news reporter. And lastly is the intrusive question. The intrusive question normally will be asked about the interviewer's private life and their family. Before asking these kind of question, it is our courtesy to ask the interviewer whether it would be off record or not. They might not want it to be posted in the news paper or the article that one wrote.

Lastly, we have the listening. By listening, we do really mean listen and not hear. By hearing, we absorb each and every sound in the surrounding and process it in our brain but by listening, we do it in the sense of that we absorb one particular sound in very direct and very focus way so that we would not leave out anything. So being an interviewee, we must be very proficient on listening. By this, I really do mean on listening. Be listening to each and every sentence, we would not leave out anything in particular. We have to listen to it whether it is boring or not. In any situation, they might speak of grandfather and grandmother stories but what should we do? Just hear and do not listen? No. We must listen to every little particular that they said. Maybe in the grandmother stories that they told you would be your main point you also would not know. Being a journalist is not about good in writing and good and asking and being a smart mouth. We as journalist also have to be a good listener.

So, being an interviewer is not an easy job. Although it is hard but it is worth it.