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1. Research until the obvious questions are gone
Preparation is not general familiarity. It is the specific act of eliminating questions the record can answer: what the organisation does, what it published, who holds which role, what was decided and when, what this person has already said in public. Read the annual report, the minutes, the register entry, the previous interviews.
Then write down what remains. Those are the questions worth the person's time, and they are usually about judgement, sequence, motive and what happens next rather than about facts. An interviewee who is asked something they have answered publicly ten times will treat the whole interview as unserious.
Note the things you will need to check with them: spellings, exact job description, figures you have derived. Keep those separate from your substantive questions, because they are quick, useful and best asked at the end when time is running out.
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2. Make the request well
The request sets the terms of everything after it. Say who you are, where the material will appear, what the story is about, how long you need, and why you are asking this person specifically. Vagueness in a request is read as either incompetence or a trap, and both reduce your chance of getting the interview.
Be honest about the shape of the story. You do not owe an interviewee your draft, but you should not misdescribe the subject to obtain access. If the piece includes criticism of them, the request is the moment to say that the interview is their opportunity to respond.
Agree the practicalities in writing: date, time, duration, place or platform, whether you will record, and who else will be present. Confirm the day before. A surprising proportion of failed interviews fail on logistics rather than on unwillingness.
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3. Settle the terms before the first question
State the attribution level in plain words at the start and note the time you did so: whether the person may be named, what description may be used if not, whether they may be quoted directly, and whether the information may be used to seek confirmation elsewhere. Do not accept a formula you cannot explain back to them.
Ask permission to record and write down the answer. Explain that you will also take notes. If the person asks for questions in advance and you have declined, restate why briefly and move on, rather than letting it become the first negotiation of the interview.
Say how long you have and stick to it. An interview that overruns puts the person under pressure at exactly the moment you are asking your hardest question, which damages both the material and the relationship. If you need more time, ask for it explicitly.
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4. Open with questions that establish the record
Start with questions the person can answer accurately and comfortably: their role, the sequence of events, what the document says. This does two things. It settles the interview into a rhythm, and it tells you how this person handles verifiable material, which is the best available guide to how much weight their unverifiable statements can carry.
Listen to the answer rather than to your next question. The single largest improvement most interviewers can make is to follow the phrase the person actually used instead of moving down the prepared list. Repeat their phrase back as a question and let them expand it.
Keep the questions short. A long question invites the person to answer whichever part suits them and gives them time to construct a position. One clause, one verb, one thing asked.
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5. Climb toward the difficult material
Order the interview so that anything likely to end it comes late. That is not manipulation; it is a recognition that you have obligations to the story as well as to the interview. By the time you reach the difficult question, the uncontroversial material should already be recorded.
Ask the difficult question plainly, once, in the fewest words possible, and then stop talking. Do not apologise for it, do not pad it with context, and do not soften it into something else. If the answer addresses a different question, ask again in the same words, which makes clear on the recording that the question was put twice.
If the person refuses, note exactly what was asked, at what time, and the words of the refusal. A refusal is reportable and specific wording matters: declining to answer, saying they cannot discuss it, and ending the interview are three different facts.
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6. Use silence, and manage the room
When an answer stops short of what you expected, say nothing for three or four seconds. The pause is often filled by the sentence the person had decided not to say. This is the most reliable single technique in interviewing and the hardest to practise, because silence feels like failure while it is happening.
Watch the room as well as the person. Note who else is present and whether their presence changes the answers, whether documents are visible, whether the person is reading from something, whether an adviser intervenes. All of it is material and none of it is on the recording.
Manage your own tells. Nodding along to an answer you consider evasive signals agreement; filling every pause signals that you want the interview to be comfortable. Neutral attention is the objective: engaged enough to encourage, unmoved enough that agreement is never implied.
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7. Interviews with people in distress
Where the subject is bereavement, illness, violence or serious loss, the interview changes character. Explain what it is for and where it will appear, say clearly that the person may stop at any point or ask for something to be excluded, and let them choose the place and the time. Allow somebody to be present with them.
Ask only for the detail the story needs. There is rarely a public interest in the most graphic particular, and asking for it damages the person and usually the piece as well. Published codes, including the National Union of Journalists code of conduct and the Press Council of Ireland code, address intrusion into grief directly and are worth reading before such an assignment rather than after.
Read back the quotations you intend to use. In an interview conducted under distress this is an accuracy measure rather than a concession, because the person may genuinely not recall what they said. Where a child or a vulnerable adult is involved, the question of who may consent is settled with an editor before the approach is made.
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8. Close the interview properly
Reserve the last five minutes. Ask the two questions that consistently produce material: whether there is anything you have not asked that you should have, and who else you should be speaking to. Then run through your checking list of spellings, titles and figures.
Confirm how you will contact them for follow-up and by which channel, and confirm the agreed attribution terms again out loud on the recording. This takes fifteen seconds and removes almost every subsequent dispute about what was agreed.
Do not linger into a conversation after you have stopped recording, unless you and the person both understand the status of what is said in it. Material offered casually after an interview is the single most frequent source of arguments about whether something was on the record.
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9. Transcribe, index and check the quotations
Do the transcription work the same day. Full transcription is ideal and often impractical; the workable minimum is an index of timestamps against subjects, with full transcription of every passage you intend to quote. Automatic tools help and must be corrected by hand for names, places and figures.
Check each intended quotation word by word against the audio, and pay particular attention to where you start the sentence. Removing an opening clause can turn a conditional statement into a flat assertion, which is the commonest way an accurate transcript becomes an inaccurate quotation.
Mark anything the person said that you cannot use under the agreed terms, so that a later reading of your own notes cannot lead you into using it by mistake. If you hand material to a colleague, hand over the terms with it.
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10. Read back facts, not the article
Send back figures, spellings, job descriptions and technical terms for confirmation, and say explicitly that you are checking facts rather than seeking approval of the piece. Most interviewees accept the distinction when it is stated; problems arise when it is left implied.
Do not send the draft for approval. Handing editorial control to a subject changes what the piece is, and a subject who has been given approval once will expect it again. Where an interviewee insists, say no and record that you did, so that the decision sits in the file rather than in your memory.
Finally, store everything together with a retention period: audio, notes, transcript, the agreed terms, and any correspondence about checking. Where the source was confidential, store it so that the identity could not be recovered by somebody who obtained the file.
Question types and what each is for
| Type | Purpose | Example shape | Failure |
|---|---|---|---|
| Open | Obtain description and voice | What happened when you arrived? | Produces atmosphere with nothing checkable |
| Closed | Pin a specific fact | On which date was it signed? | An interview of forms rather than answers |
| Mirror | Invite elaboration in their words | You said it was unworkable? | Overused, and starts to sound like avoidance |
| Challenge | Put the adverse point | The minutes say the opposite. Why? | Asked too early and ends the interview |
| Housekeeping | Confirm spellings, titles, figures | How is your title written? | Forgotten, and produces avoidable errors |
Planning the time you actually have
questions that fit = minutes available ÷ average minutes per answeressential questions first = mark three, ask them by the halfway pointWorked example: a thirty-minute interview where answers run about two and a half minutes fits roughly twelve questions, not the twenty on your page. Marking three essentials and reaching them by minute fifteen is what protects the interview from a long opening answer.
The arithmetic is trivial and the discipline is not. Most interviews that fail on time fail because the reporter did not decide in advance which three answers the story could not be written without.
A thirty-minute interview, minute by minute
- 00:00Terms stated in words, recording consent asked for and noted, duration confirmed.
- 02:00Record-establishing questions: role, sequence, what the document says.
- 08:00Open questions on the substance, following the person's own phrasing.
- 15:00First essential question. If it has not been reached, stop the digression.
- 20:00The difficult question, asked plainly and once, then silence.
- 24:00Repeat of any question that was answered sideways, in the same words.
- 27:00Anything I should have asked, and who else should I speak to.
- 29:00Housekeeping: spellings, exact title, figures, follow-up channel, terms restated.
Checklist for the interview file
- Record read and public statements checked, so no question repeats the archive.
- Request stated the subject, the outlet, the duration and the reason for asking.
- Attribution terms stated aloud, agreed and noted with the time.
- Recording consent asked for, with the answer written down.
- Three essential questions marked and reached before the halfway point.
- Difficult question asked once plainly, and repeated if answered sideways.
- Refusals recorded in the person's own words with the time.
- Quotations transcribed and checked against the audio, including sentence starts.
- Facts read back for confirmation, with no approval of the article offered.
Questions readers ask
What if the interviewee brings a press officer?
Note who is present and whether they intervene, because it is material. Continue the interview, address your questions to the person you came to interview, and record any answer given by somebody else as coming from them.
Is it acceptable to record a phone interview?
Ask first and note the answer. Recording without telling the other person raises separate legal and data-protection questions that vary by setting, and it is hard to defend editorially without a serious public-interest justification decided above reporter level.
How do I handle an answer that is simply untrue?
Put the contrary evidence in the same interview, plainly and once: name the document and ask about the discrepancy. Do not argue, and do not let it pass unchallenged and then correct it silently in the copy.