Interview Prep

Mario Garcia, one of the top designers in the world, has put together a post about The Art of Preparing for the Interview – and it’s something every journalism student and journalist needs to read.

It has me rethinking how I’m going to have students structure interviews for multimedia projects. Perhaps before allowing them to go out into the field, they’ll need to submit three to five questions to me (or the class) then we’ll roll the interview footage in class to make sure they didn’t wander too much from those.

Thoughts?

And while it seems silly we’d have to remind students to do some research, remember that yesterday we had to remind the professionals to dress appropriately at baseball games.

Students would never be unprepared, you say? Let me tell you about the senior broadcast news student who asked to interview me, showed up late, then realized she didn’t have a memory card for her camera but that was okay, because she hadn’t charged the battery … when she came back for a second try, she kept calling me, “Dr. Johnson.”

Which, despite what my handwriting may imply, I am not.

So, yeah. Spring students? You’re going to be allowed three to five questions for your project. That’s it. Don’t let the first ones be useless backgrounders.