Resource Centre

The Media Diversity Institute (MDI) has prepared these tip sheets for interviews that require extra care on the part of a journalist. The three links below provide useful help and ideas for the following situations: interviewing people with disabilities, interviewing people from other groups and interviewing victims of human rights abuses.
MDI - Interviewing people with disabilities
MDI - Interviewing people from other groups (PDF)
MDI - Interviewing victims of traumatic human rights abuses

John Sawatsky's seminars on interviewing are legendary. An NPR.org piece takes a look at Sawatsky's role both at ESPN and as a lecturer. A feature for the American Journalism Review goes into further detail.

E-mail, Blackberries and text-messenging are all standard tools for journalists. Stephen Miller's new book, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art discusses ideas and concerns about general conversation that may be of use to reporters doing interviews. In an interview with Kenneth Whyte for Maclean's, Miller said: "I argue that face-to-face conversation is the ideal form of conversation because you have nuance, you have gesture, you have tone. Phone conversation is second-best, and electronic conversation is bad in general, because things go awry in emails."

Journalism.org has compiled a series of articles, tip sheets and guidelines covering various aspects of interviewing. Using e-mail, arranging your questions, "funnel" style interviews and getting anecdotes are just a few of the topics covered. Each is titled and catalogued at the link below, which would be a useful bookmark on any journalist's browser.