I think the best interviews are the ones where you meet someone in person, but sometimes that’s just not possible. When you can’t meet face to face or over the phone, email bridges the gap between you and your subject matter expert.

As a writer, you will need to turn to subject matter experts many times during your career. You will be drawing on their expertise for both your fiction and non-fiction writing, and you may even be doing a feature story about the person. You’ll be a better-prepared writer if you know when and how to use this process.

This three-part series will look at why to avoid email interviews (today’s post), when to embrace them, and how to conduct them.

Note: This post is NOT related to a recent online interview I did with a very cool blogger. She is one of those rare people who’s just as quotable via email as she probably is in person. :o)

Why Email Interviews Are Tough

The more physical distance you get from your interviewee, the tougher it is to do a great interview. Think about it: Do you find it easier to talk to someone who’s on the next sofa cushion, in the next room, or at the opposite side of the house?

• Best interviews: In person
• Good interviews: Over the phone
• OK interviews: Instant online accessibility via IM, chat, private meeting room, etc.
• Difficult interviews: Email
• Other: I suppose the degree of separation in space and time could keep ratcheting up in difficulty (snail mail, Pony Express, and chiseling in stone) but I think email is challenging enough!

Why to Avoid Email Interviews

1 - You lose the ability to get any sensory details via sight, sound, smell, touch, or taste. This affects you in two ways:

• Your ability to gather concrete data. What’s an interview of a cook without smelling, seeing, and tasting the cake?
• Your ability to gather background data to give your story a rich and meaningful backdrop. I once had to cover a KKK rally as a journalist. I would never have known they hung a U.S. flag as a backdrop (or that they treated it disrespectfully by allowing it to be displayed wrinkled) if I hadn’t gone in person. Neither would I have known they had an appalling children’s comic coloring book called “The Klan Van.”

When you’re limited to email interaction, all you’re left with is data … unless you’re lucky enough to be interviewing someone who writes as colorfully as he talks.

2 - You’re asking far more of your interviewee. He’s not just sitting there answering questions or chatting on the phone. Now he’s got to exert himself to type, and he’s going to worry about spelling and grammar. You’re giving him way too many chances to become self-conscious and — worse — to self-edit.

3 - People like to make themselves look good, or at least inoffensive. Given an opportunity to read over what they’ve written and edit it, they will delete their colorful quotes and edgy commentary, replacing it with bland, dignified blah-blah writing. This transforms your interview from a dish of Cherry Garcia ice cream to a melting scoop of store-brand vanilla ice milk.

4 - You end up with not enough information. Not everyone thinks as well on paper as they do when talking to a real live person, so they get terse and generic when asked to email their answers. Or they may be busy or don’t place as high a priority on the interview as you do, so they don’t bother to type in something they might mention casually in person. And the interviewee is likely to clam up because he’s less comfortable with you via email compared to chatting with you in person and getting a feel for who you are.

5 - You end up with too much information. Once a helpful motormouth has written you a 10-page response, it’s difficult to discard it and keep just the one good pithy paragraph you really needed. You and they are both INVESTED. (This is another reason I prefer handwritten notes over tape recording. Once you’ve transcribed a taped interview, you want to use all those words you’ve labored to type. When you take notes by hand or by quietly typing while someone’s on the phone, you’re limited by the speed at which you can capture the information, so you’re more selective about what you use. You pick only the best stuff.)

6 - Your tools are limited. You can’t use the pregnant pause, quizzical expression, or meaningful glance to wordlessly elicit more explanation from your interviewee. You have to openly and directly pester him with a follow-up question, and sometimes this can annoy the person, who thought he was all through with you. Or it may cause him to clam up because you’ve obviously noticed something he wished he hadn’t said.

Take-away question:
Can you think of any other reasons to avoid doing interviews by email? Post them in the comments, please!

Next Posts in This Series

• Why Email Interviews Are Useful (coming on Saturday)
• Conducting the Email Interview (coming on Sunday)

Related Post

• Let an old reporter talk: 12 tips to interview anyone

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