Our first writer’s fortnight session was Steve Dawson who is a Fox Star Sports commentator and biographer. In today’s talk, he explained the 5 ways to get the best answers in an interview and told us his tremendous stories about meeting famous athletes. When I researched about him and learnt how he interviewed a lot of athletes, celebrities and inventors, I thought that he is lucky that he gets to meet and ask questions to these famous people, especially if they are your role model or a big fan of them.
The most striking part of the talk was his extra tip of an interview, which is to not be a fanboy/fangirl. I always thought that it is better if you are a fan of the interviewee because you will want to know that person more. I thought that being a fan will make the journalist ask interesting questions, that his/her fans don’t know which will lead to a unique article. Steve Dawson said that it is important to act professionally and to not tell them that you are their fan because that will be same as “everyone else”. “If you approach as a professional, the interviewee will have respect”, he said. His story about meeting a famous Filipino boxer, Manny Pacquiao was astonishing. He interviewed him one-on-one at Marina Bay Sands and Steve Dawson was a big fan of him. He interviewed him professionally and after he finished his interview, Manny Pacquiao offered him to take a picture with him. I can’t imagine myself being a journalist and interviewing my favourite athlete professionally but this story made me realise how it is important to be professional to get what you want and in the same time get respect from the interviewee.
January 16, 2018 at 1:20 pm
yes, I felt that too. I could have guessed that behaving like a simpering fan might be seen as quite demeaning, but it was compelling how strongly he felt about what it means to be professional. You can see why he has such good long standing relationships with sports people…I think that’s how he ended up writing Alex Yoong’s biography.