COMM 209: Assignment for FridayMonday ... plus: notes on a quietly effective interviewing style

Read the story of Jenny Deadline in Harrower, pp. 20-21, and come to class ready to discuss it. Ask yourself: Who did Jenny interview? What did they tell her? What more could they have told her if she'd known to ask? (Maybe nothing. Who knows? But let's think about it.) And let's move on. But I like the story of Jenny Deadline. There's something very true-to-life about it. We'll come back to it several times.

New reading and in-class discussion assignments.

Since we lost some time last week when I was sick, I want to move right into interviewing. Which I'm going to define as what happens whenever you talk to somebody, take notes on what they say and write it up. (You won't find that in a glossary, but it is what it is.) For Wednesday, skim back over Chapters 3 and 4 in Harrower on reporting and writing the news and ask yourself how much of this is really about interviewing?

Today, I want to watch clips of three TV interviews.

The first one aired Thursday on Fox News, when right-wing talk show host Sean Hannity interviewed former Illinois Gov. Rod Blagojevich on Hannity's show. Click on link that says "Video: Watch Sean's interview" to watch -- it won't take long, unless you enjoy watching two bulls paw the ground and snort at each other across the pasture field.) Notice how he's not asking questions. He says he is, but he isn't. He's giving little speeches. It's all about Hannity.

The next is an interview Geraldo Rivera sprung on Blagojevich last month in a New York City parking lot. (Click on link that says "Click here to see Geraldo's interview with Governor Blagojevich." Gee, this stuff isn't rocket science, is it?) Now I don't like Geraldo any better than I do Hannity. They're both blowhards. But again, I want you to notice something else. Notice how he draws Blagojevich out, keeps him talking, disagrees with him, agrees, schmoozes, whatever, anything, everything to keep him talking. Geraldo's style as an interviewer is 180 degrees away from mine, but it works.

My preference, for what it's worth, is for a quieter style of interviewing. When I was covering courts and sheriff's police in East Tennessee, I got to know several very good criminal investigators. There wasn't much they hadn't seen before, and they weren't easily surprised. The ones I admired the most were low-key guys, very patient and unfailingly courteous.

So after watching Hannity and Rivera playing their tough-guy journalist roles, I went looking on the Internet for video clips of an interviewer whose style and tactics reminded me of the criminal investigators I used to know on the 9th and 10th Judicial Circuit in Tennessee. It took me a while, but I found one.

It's Katie Couric.

Katie Couric? The CBS news anchor?

Yep. When Couric interviewed Republican vice presidential candidate Sarah Palin last year, she was unfailingly courteous, she was patient and she was as low-key as I've ever seen her. Usually I think of Couric as ... OK, well, perky. Her job wasn't so much to keep Palin talking as it was to get her back to specifics, to lead her along.