I
listened to a fascinating interview on the radio the other day. What
made it fascinating was that the interviewer's voice, and questions,
had been entirely edited out. What you heard was a very eloquent
explanation of a difficult topic, in which the questions were tacit,
unheard. Compared to most radio articles, op-eds and even interviews,
this spot was tight, engaging and informative. I dubbed it (in the
spirit of the term Un-Conference) an Un-Interview.
I'd
never heard of this reporting technique before, and it got me thinking:
Do reporters waste a lot of listener/watcher time by including their
questions in their final product? What skills and techniques must be
applied to ensure such reports are clear and smooth-flowing – it seems
to me a lot of editing and many re-takes would probably be necessary.
But the result is definitely worth it.
Could this be done in a report with more than one
interviewee? There doesn't seem to be any reason why not, and the
result might be a very crisp 'conversation' among several people who
might not ever have met or even spoken together, with the interviewer
weaving their comments together and then extracting all evidence of
his/her editorial and compositional wizardry in the final product.
Has anyone heard of this being done?
That got me thinking next about written
reports: magazine and online interview transcripts and even blog
articles. I find both interview transcripts and FAQs very compelling
and much more readable than an explanatory article of unbroken text in
one 'voice'. Why would this be true in written media, when the opposite
seems to be true in audio & video media? Is it because so much more
is conveyed by the tone of voice, facial expression and body language
of an interviewee in a radio or TV spot, whereas in a written article
you are drawn to the boldface interviewer questions as something to
break up the monotony of the expressionless text? Or is it because in
most audio and video media you have to listen to the speaker from
beginning to end (your only alternative being to change the channel)
whereas in written media you can browse ahead, and the interviewer or
FAQ questions provide convenient aids or hooks to facilitate effective
browsing?
Protocol in formal written articles is that, if the
item is longer than a couple of pages, the author normally provides
section headings to break up the text. In a web page, however, a page
can be a mile long, and flipping back and forth is awkward. What's
worse, in a long article you often can't use the section headings to
browse ahead – usually you need to understand what's in the early
sections for the material in later sections to be comprehensible
(unlike FAQs and interview questions, where each Q & A usually
stands alone).
So do we need a new protocol to allow browsers of
long articles (say, anything more than 500 words) to jump ahead and
read only the piece they are interested in? Suppose, for example, we
were to create a standard of, at least every 200 words, boldfacing no
more than 10 consecutive words that explained the gist of what that 200
words was about? Or, alternatively, providing a short (10 words is
probably too cryptic, while 20 is probably too long) boldface header
with this explanation at least every 200 words? Or should these section
headers be structured as 'questions' to the writer, so that the blog
post or article becomes a (self-)interview, a conversation?
I've
tried variations on this in this blog over the years – boldfacing,
highlighting, even providing 50-word abstracts at the start of some
posts (and in my table of contents I provide a one-sentence summary of
every article). Readers seem to like this, but I confess it's hard
work. And radio and TV reporters on newsmagazine stories, don't dare
provide a commensurate up-front summary of what their stories are
about, including the story's conclusion, essential learning and
required action -- in case it causes you to change the station.
Instead, they provide you with a one-sentence teaser,
often in the form of a question, to lure you into watching a story that
usually isn't as interesting or useful as the teaser promised. Kinda
like my blog article titles, some would say.
This article is
about 900 words. If you've read this far, perhaps I'm worrying
needlessly about the need to provide browsing readers with section
headings or abstracts. But just in case, here's a four-sentence
summary, that I might have
put at the top, or in four boldface section headings above. And just
below, I've re-written the entire article as a (self)-interview, with
the questions in bold.
Summary:
Some radio interviews now excise the interviewer's questions, and then
edit the responses to produce a concise and articulate 'speech'.
Perhaps we should encourage more radio and TV interviewers to take
themselves out of the picture and save us all time. In written
material, by contrast, interviews and FAQs are more attractive and
easier to browse than long text in a single 'voice'. Perhaps writers of
articles over 500 words should always provide readers with an abstract
up-front, or alternatively bold-face key points that convey the gist of
their argument.
What do you think? Does the
summary, or the revamping as an interview below, add any value to the
article? Would it be worth it to readers if every writer of online
articles accepted such a convention? Don't we in the media owe it to
our readers, listeners and viewers to save them time any way we can?
Un-Interviews, and the Conversational Nature of Blogs (Take Two)
A Conversation with Dave Pollard
Q:
You say that some radio interviews now excise the interviewer's
questions, and then edit the responses to produce a concise and
articulate 'speech'. Can you give us an example?
A: I
listened to a fascinating interview on the radio the other day. What
made it fascinating was that the interviewer's voice, and questions,
has been entirely edited out. What you heard was a very eloquent
explanation of a difficult topic, in which the questions were tacit,
unheard. Compared to most radio articles, op-eds and even interviews,
this spot was tight, engaging and informative. I dubbed it (in the
spirit of the term Un-Conference) an Un-Interview.
I'd
never heard of this reporting technique before, and it got me thinking:
Do reporters waste a lot of listener/watcher time by including their
questions unnecessarily in their final product? What skills and
techniques must be applied to ensure such reports are clear and
smooth-flowing – it seems to me a lot of editing and many re-takes
would probably be necessary. But the result is definitely worth it.
Q: Are you saying we should encourage more radio and TV interviewers to take themselves out of the picture and save us all time?
A: I think so. I'm even wondering: Could this be done in a report with more than one
interviewee? There doesn't seem to be any reason why not, and the
result might be a very crisp 'conversation' among several people who
might not ever have met or even spoken together, with the interviewer
weaving their comments together and then extracting all evidence of
his/her editorial and compositional wizardry in the final product. I'd
be interested in knowing if anyone has heard of this being done.
Q:
In written material, by contrast, interviews and FAQs are more
attractive and easier to browse than long text in a single 'voice'. Why
are the 'questions' a detriment on the radio and TV, but a valuable
addition in written work?
A: That's an interesting
question, and it applies to magazine and online interview transcripts
and even blog articles. People love interview transcripts and FAQs, and
surveys suggest they are more often read than similar content in a
single text article. Why would this be true in written media, when the
opposite seems to be true in audio & video media? Perhaps it is
because so much more is conveyed by the tone of voice, facial
expression and body language of an interviewee in a radio or TV spot,
whereas in a written article you are drawn to the boldface interviewer
questions as something to break up the monotony of the expressionless
text. Or it may be because in most audio and video media you have to
listen to the speaker from beginning to end (your only alternative
being to change the channel) whereas in written media you can browse
ahead, and the interviewer or FAQ questions provide convenient aids or
hooks to facilitate effective browsing.
Protocol in written
articles is that, if the item is longer than a couple of pages, the
author normally provides section headings to break up the text. In a
web page, however, a page can be a mile long, and flipping back and
forth is awkward. What's worse, you often can't use the section
headings to browse ahead – usually you need to understand what's in the
early sections for the material in later sections to be comprehensible
(unlike FAQs and interview questions, where each Q & A usually
stands alone).
Q: Are you
suggesting writers of long articles always provide readers with an
abstract up-front, or alternatively section headings that convey the
essence of their argument?
A: Perhaps we do need a new protocol to allow browsers of long articles (say, anything more than 500 words)
to jump ahead and read only the piece they are interested in. We could create a standard of, at least every 200 words,
boldfacing no more than 10 consecutive words that explained the gist of
what that 200 words was about. Or, alternatively, providing a short (10
words is probably too cryptic, while 20 is probably too long) boldface
header with this explanation at least every 200 words. Or these
section headers could be structured as 'questions' to the writer, so that the
blog post or article becomes a (self-)interview, a conversation?
I've tried variations on this in this blog over the years – boldfacing,
highlighting, even providing 50-word abstracts at the start of some
posts (and in my table of contents I provide a one-sentence summary of
every article). Readers seem to like this, but I confess it's hard
work. And radio and TV reporters on newsmagazine stories, don't dare
provide a commensurate up-front summary of what their stories are
about, including the story's conclusion, essential learning and
required action -- in case it causes you to change the station.
Instead, they provide you with a one-sentence teaser,
often in the form of a question, to lure you into watching a story that
usually isn't as interesting or useful as the teaser promised. Kinda
like my blog article titles, some would say.
What
do your readers think? Does a summary, or revamping the article as an
interview, add any value to it? Would it be worth it to readers if
every writer of online articles accepted such a convention? Don't we in
the media owe it to our readers, listeners and viewers to save them
time any way we can?
|
MADE IN CANADA
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instincts 
