Writer’s Fortnight – Steve Dawson (16/1/18)

Before the session, I had never thought much about interviews and how in-depth you could possibly go with them. Today Steve Dawson, a famous journalist and Fox Sports presenter, who has had many interviews (with a handful of celebrities such as Steve Jobs and Jeff Bezos) came in and explained how to form and ask good questions, and conduct a successful interview. After listening to Steve Dawson’s speech I have learned a couple of things, they are as follows. To begin with, ask open-ended questions. You need to challenge and make the person you are interviewing think and expand more, not just yes or no questions as you do not get any detail. Second, set the questions so they do not have boundaries. The best type of question to ask is, “how do you feel”. Steve Dawson gave an example where he met with Jeff Bezos and he asked, “Are you concerned that your company is not making a profit”. Obviously, this is a yes/no question and a better one to ask would be, “How does it feel to have not made any profit”. Third, do not interrupt. Not only is this something negative, but it is extremely rude. Not only that, but you will also lose the relation quickly as someone who continually interrupts would not be someone you would want to spend time with. And let alone all that you did not even let them finish, so you are not even getting the full background and story. Fourth, listen to the answer even if you have got a voice recorder, as you can then ask follow up questions to get even more information. Fifth, do not ask double barrel questions. Ninety-five percent of the time these forms of questions do not work as the person you are interviewing immediately begins answering the second question, which means by the time they have finished, both of you have completely forgotten about the first part of the question, which means there was not even a point for it in the first place. Lastly, if you are interviewing someone you are a fan of, do not act like a fan and ask for selfies etc. Get to their level, gain their respect and most importantly be a professional about it.

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