Un-Interviews, and the Conversational Nature of Blogs

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 ñ 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 ñ 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 ñ 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.

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?

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 ñ 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 ñ 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 ñ 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 themtime any way we can?