Friday, July 13, 2012

Anything worth doing...

...is worth doing at least half-assed.

If you are the interviewer for a blogtalkradio show, you owe it to your guest to be prepared, to take the thing seriously. Winging it by the seat of your casual pants is a discourtesy to guest and to listeners.

That's the way I see it, and I happen to be correct.

How uncomfortable to guest and listener for the interviewee him- or herself to have to become their own interviewer! To subtlety nudge the master of ceremonies toward questions or observations that are within a mile of the topic. Or be forced to enter conversational void-spaces to urge the fumbling continuum along a sustained and coherent pathway.

No, you don't have to be a skilled or trained radio professional. Just bring some basic tools of interviewing to the table: a bit of research, some notes, a freaking outline.

2 comments:

  1. Ah everybody wants to be a Radio star these days.. I used to (out of support for fellow writers) tune in to a few different log Talk radio shows but damn, they started getting childish, like you said totally unprepared interviewers (I mean you are on radio so why would your desk not be covered in notes and such)
    It's quite a disservice to the interviewee and the listening audience.
    I'll stick to NPR when I want to hear an interview :-)

    ReplyDelete