1/27/09

I haven't had the nerve

to read it in "print," but they ran it, so here it is. Logo, by the way, is by the inimitable Stephen Kroninger. Those were the good old days when his work ran in DI/DO. . . 
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3 comments:

Beacongal said...

Here's a question for an old-time journo: Do we have the obligation to tell people that an interview was conducted via e-mail?

I know you're incredibly articulate in person, but the complicated sentence structure in this entertaining and enlightening Q&A suggests that your answers were provided in written form. If so, does the reader need to know?

Of course, it's not your obligation to do the informing; if it's anybody's job, it's that of the interviewer's. And perhaps it was mentioned someplace else that I didn't see.

Just curious what you think about this matter. I sound horrible when I'm on BlogTalkRadio as I grasp for the right word or say "Uhm" for the umpteenth time. However, if I could clean up the transcript and post it into my blog, I would sound a whole lot better.

January 28, 2009 at 5:38 PM
Gastropoda said...

My assumption these days is that the interview was done by email unless noted otherwise. (Whenever I tried to note that reality in news stories the last few years, the clause was inevitably excised. I spoke to Michael Pollan a little bit, for instance, but his answers for a story I did were all sent by email. In this brave new world, it doesn't seem to matter.)

And yes, the sentence structure is a total giveaway of how this was conducted. I should have just banged out answers immediately instead of angsting over them.

Thanks to coaching from Bob, I feel pretty good about the Lenny Lopate interview I have posted over at the base camp, from several years ago, and about the teevee dinner thing I did for NPR quite some time ago. But those were such one-offs it's no wonder I wasn't umming all over the place.

That said, I'd clean up your transcripts and post them, with a note noting you have done that. It's more about transparency, about not trying to deceive. I always loved how Paul Theroux dealt with reprinting his essays: "This was published in substantially altered form in xxxx."

January 28, 2009 at 5:59 PM
Beacongal said...

Thanks for a thoughtful answer.

January 28, 2009 at 6:13 PM

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