Journalism 101: To Tape or Not To Tape
It looks like we’re having an intern for all of three days this summer, so I’ll be dropping my pearls of wisdom here, instead of in an intern’s ear.
At my first newspaper, the News Messenger of Christiansburg, Virginia, my editor was the inimitable Debbie Haerr. I was new to newspaper writing, having gone to college to become a disc jockey, and changed course towards becoming a television reporter after ending up in an Electronic News Gathering class. I had written a total of one newspaper article while I was in college, for the campus paper, but my folks were moving to Egypt and the TV stations weren’t calling (yet) and my girlfriend suggested I go ahead and apply to the News Messenger.
“What the hell,” Debbie said, for some reason. “I’ll give you a shot.”
It was an amazing time, where I would literally find myself improving in my writing and news gathering skills (two separate skill sets, as I’ll explain some other time) expanding on a daily basis. I was full of questions, and in Debbie, I was fortunate enough to have a willing mentor to answer them. Debbie had been an award-winning reporter right out of the chute in the Midwest, and was full of good insights.
Not surprisingly, as I had been a Communications major with a broadcasting concentration, I had never thought to take a shorthand class or anything like that. I had a great deal of trouble writing fast enough to keep up with people speaking, and as getting a quote right is incredibly important — even if the substance is right, being off on the wording undercuts the reporter’s credibility with that source to a degree — I asked her if I should get a tape recorder and record interviews.
“No. You won’t listen to what they’re saying if you tape.”
I thought about this.
That night, I went home to my basement apartment in Blacksburg and watched “The Arsenio Hall Show.” He was interviewing Michael Jordan, as I recall. If not Jordan, then some big deal NBA star who had been interviewed hundreds, perhaps thousands of times in his life, and was very comfortable with the process. Talk show guests are typically pre-interviewed by show staff who go over topics, find the best ones to ask about and prepare the good questions for the host on 3″ x 5″ cards. And Arsenio dutifully worked his way through the cards, asking the questions of Jordan. And Jordan, being a veteran interviewee, was funny and charming, and gave great answers, as he tends to do. And after he finished, Arsenio would ask the next question.
And then, Jordan stopped, slowly looking over at Arsenio.
“I just answered that.”
Jordan, it turns out, had jumped ahead in the conversation, expanding on the answer of one question and already giving the answer of what should have been the next question. Arsenio was flustered, and shuffled his cards nervously.
“You weren’t listening to me, were you?” Jordan asked, his mouth smiling, but not his eyes.
The upshot: I don’t use a tape recorder.
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