Playing the interview game
I have a toleration threshold in minus numbers of authors behaving like arseholes in interviews. Fortunately it doesn't happen too often, but when it does, it leaves a bad taste in the mouth.
What tends to make it even more infuriating from the journalist's point of view is that the pressure for the interview might well have come from a pushy agent or publicist. And I'm never sympathetic when celebrities moan about 'having' to do interviews. If you don't want to be famous, go and keep geese in the Shetland Islands, or tend your roses in mid-Wales.
I'm not a violent woman, but I always had the urge to slap former England soccer player Alan Shearer's smug face very hard. He spent an admittedly illustrious career behaving like a complete dick every time he was interviewed, and took huge delight in giving the most bland and unhelpful answers possible. And now, of course, he's a media pundit on TV. Yeah, well, whatever . . .
Just over a year ago we started an interview column on RTE called 'Sixty seconds with . . .' where we fire a dozen questions at an author. I'd had the idea in the back of my mind for a while, but wasn't sure how it would gel with what's firmly a review site. But a chat with the lovely John Connolly persuaded me to give it a go – and it's been a success. We currently have interviews stockpiled into January 2009.
What's interesting, though, is how authors respond to the off-beat questions. Out of the four dozen or so interviews we've featured, only one writer seemingly couldn't be bothered to play ball. One or two others have been a touch dull. Most have entered into the spirit of things and provided witty and interesting answers (looks admiring in the direction of the very wonderful Reginald Hill who, I'm told, doesn't usually do interviews, but clearly made an exception for our email one . . .)
My blogmate and PR guru PJ Nunn has advised in the past on interview etiquette. Here's a journalist's view of it:
- Don't set up an interview with a reporter, and then arrive late or not at all (or not unless there's a life or death reason behind it).
- Don't offer the journalist a ten minute-chat – that's pretty much a waste of both sides' time and is unlikely to yield a worthwhile article. If I'm doing a profile of someone, I'd prefer to chat for 45 minutes to an hour. I can make do with 30 minutes at a pinch. If you really can't offer that, see if the interview can be done another time, perhaps by phone.
- Don't sit there looking stupendously bored. Reporters spend their lives interviewing bores, and have developed the ability to look fascinated. You can do the same.
- Don't spend the interview texting or answering your mobile. Turn the damn thing off before the journalist inserts it where the sun doesn't shine.
- Don’t sigh loudly when you're asked biographical questions and tell the reporter to read the press release or look in the cuttings files. Press releases are notoriously inaccurate, and once duff info works its way into features, it hangs around for evermore. Journalists are taught to check, check and check again, so humour them and help them out.
- Don't drone on with the same old anecdotes you've trotted out on automatic pilot since dinosaurs walked the earth. Most journalists will have worked hard to tailor their questions to you and not just ask the same ones they use for every Tom, Dick or Author. And they want their feature to have a new angle.
- Don't be paranoid. Most journalists aren't out to stitch you up – they're too busy and too professional. In my experience hatchet jobs only get done on the arseholes who truly deserve them.
