Steve Dawson is a interviewer and journalist, he has worked for ESPN Star Sports/Fox Sports and One Champion. During his talk he mentioned his former job as an accountant and the time that was spent there, One of the students asked him” do you regret your time as an accountant” and he simply replied with a no, then he expanded on that and explained that accountancy allowed him to gain accuracy for journalism and interviewing. I found this very interesting as it surprised me to hear that he had no regret doing this job. Steve Dawson is very head strong and believes that you have to stay professional at all times when being a journalist. There was a story that he shared with us about his interview with manny Pacquiao he stated in his talk that he was a massive boxing fan and yet was still able to keep a professional approach by not asking him for a photo however when he turned to leave manny Pacquiao asked for a photo with him, this goes to show that he is a very well respected man that has a level of standard.
He also stated in his talk what he believes to be the ‘5 most important things during an interview’
- Ask open ended questions – Providing a challenge for your interviewer
- Set the answer free – Don’t set unnecessary parameters
- Don’t interrupt
- Be a single shooter – Don’t ask double barrelled questions
- Listen to the answer – follow up question
I believe that all of these points that he has made are from years of experience when it comes to interviews as well as watching other interviews make mistakes. He shared a story with us regarding the double barrelled questions, one of the other interviewers asked an F1 driver ” what do you think of the way you did, how do you feel” and the F1 driver replied with “good”,this is because he is only basing his answer on the last question.
One of my favourite quotes from Steve Dawson would be ” News is only news because it exists during the day”. It goes to show the casual yet formal side of being an interviewer. He also quoted that ” I never take my job for granted” this goes to show how grateful he is for this job and how much he wants to stay in the job. All of the years leading up to this were years well spent to get him to where he is today.
