I've covered the difference between primary and secondary sources in previous posts and told you that you should always strive to use a primary source rather than someone else's reporting of that source material. Obviously, an original interview that you conduct is a primary source. Don't overlook that fact if you later write on a similar topic. You can cite the expert you interviewed with a link back to that interview as a primary source for future articles.
This is an exception to the rule. Ordinarily, I think linking back to one of your articles as a source of factual information for a news report is not a good idea if the information you're citing was originally drawn from another source. In other words, many articles (especially news articles) are themselves secondary or even tertiary sources.
If your previous article said, "The FBI, on their website, are asking for the public's aid in locating Whitey Bolger." That's a secondary source with the FBI website being the primary source. If you wrote "ABC News reported that the FBI Director asked for the public's help..." Your article becomes a tertiary source, ABC News is the secondary source for the primary source which was the FBI Director himself. These kinds of chain references where the reader who wishes to check your source has to go through several links to get to the source are damaging to the writer's credibility, in my opinion, and should be avoided.
However, articles in which you personally conducted the interview and are bearing witness to what the relevent source said to you, are fair primary source references. There is no extra link in the chain for the reader to chase down because you've done the original investigation and reporting and these articles can credibly be used as primary source references for future articles.
Note that this is for news source references. If you include links to other articles you've written as additional background material, further reading, related topics, or also of interest pieces, that's a separate thing altogether and I don't take issue with that at all.
Showing posts with label expert opinion. Show all posts
Showing posts with label expert opinion. Show all posts
Tuesday, June 21, 2011
Thursday, June 2, 2011
Why use original interviews as source material?
As a journalist, non-fiction writer in a niche topic, or a generalist, your work can benefit greatly by interviewing others and using their knowledge and quotes in your articles. By asking questions and listening to the answers, you as a writer are acquiring original source information that is absolutely unique no matter how many other writers are working on the same topic. By going directly to the source, your article benefits from increased credibility.
A thousand people can write about the latest study linking the excessive eating of ice cream and unprecendented gains in longevity by using the original published research paper as a primary source. All one thousand of those writers will have access to the same facts, the same researcher comments, and will all see that original source material worded exactly the same way. Many of their reports, even those found at major outlets like Reuters, AP, and Yahoo! will be very, very similar in content and tone. By talking to the lead researcher directly, however, you can follow any angle of questioning that you think is interesting. You'll get original quotes that are different from those that appear in every other published report on the subject and you'll almost certainly get facts and insights to which no other writer has access.
In other words, you'll be able to turn out a better article than anyone who relied only on material that is presented in identical fashion to everyone. That's not to say good, or even great articles can't be written without original interview material. They are every day. It is ultimately a question of the writer's imagination, creativity, skill with words, discipline and experience that dictate the quality of any article. Starting out with higher quality, more unique source material such as an original interview, however, gives the artist a bigger pallette from which to fill the empty canvas.
As if that weren't enough of a reward, you may find yourself earning higher upfront payments for these highly original articles as well.
For some, finding the right people to interview can be difficult, though. On one of my other blogs (Interviews with Experts), I am launching into a series of posts about identifying, contacting and securing interviews with original sources from many different walks of life from the everyday person, to the knowedgeable expert, to the celebrity.
A thousand people can write about the latest study linking the excessive eating of ice cream and unprecendented gains in longevity by using the original published research paper as a primary source. All one thousand of those writers will have access to the same facts, the same researcher comments, and will all see that original source material worded exactly the same way. Many of their reports, even those found at major outlets like Reuters, AP, and Yahoo! will be very, very similar in content and tone. By talking to the lead researcher directly, however, you can follow any angle of questioning that you think is interesting. You'll get original quotes that are different from those that appear in every other published report on the subject and you'll almost certainly get facts and insights to which no other writer has access.
In other words, you'll be able to turn out a better article than anyone who relied only on material that is presented in identical fashion to everyone. That's not to say good, or even great articles can't be written without original interview material. They are every day. It is ultimately a question of the writer's imagination, creativity, skill with words, discipline and experience that dictate the quality of any article. Starting out with higher quality, more unique source material such as an original interview, however, gives the artist a bigger pallette from which to fill the empty canvas.
As if that weren't enough of a reward, you may find yourself earning higher upfront payments for these highly original articles as well.
For some, finding the right people to interview can be difficult, though. On one of my other blogs (Interviews with Experts), I am launching into a series of posts about identifying, contacting and securing interviews with original sources from many different walks of life from the everyday person, to the knowedgeable expert, to the celebrity.
Monday, May 23, 2011
Related blog post: Interviews
I just wanted to drop a quick note here that I have another blog called "Interviews with Experts." It is mainly dedicated to collecting all the interviews I have done with experts on various topics, but it also includes posts which discuss issues that have come up in the course of conducting interviews and my experiences around the interviews themselves. Since interviews are a key news data gathering tool, I am mentioning it here for those that are interested, but I'm generally not going to cross-post every entry from there to here.
Sunday, April 17, 2011
Interviews: PR versus News
As journalists, we benefit when an expert agrees to discuss some newsworthy topic with us. Whether it is a complete interview, some expert commentary, or filling in some background information to help our readers better understand some difficult subject, the addition of credible, original, third-party quotes almost always makes for a better article. What we have to also realize, is that, these experts, also have a purpose in giving us the interview.
Sometimes that purpose is simply to gain name recognition or to keep the name of their organization in the public eye. Sometimes, though, especially with people representing commercial operations, the sole purpose for granting an interview is to paint their company in a positive light for a free commercial. That's certainly their right. As journalists, though, we are not in the business of writing commercials for publication on news channels.
When the interview is giving a company a direct opportunity to refute some allegation against the company, then these PR statements can be of direct use as the official company response to some accusation or situation which casts them in a negative light. When we are asking for their expertise on a matter either not related or only peripherally related to the company in question, however, such scripted responses are of marginal use.
It is our job to cut through the company line to find real information that is of value to readers. For example, I recently had the opportunity to interview the Vice President of North American Manufacturing from the Ford Motor Company for a news article about the state of American manufacturing. He was certainly qualified to speak on the subject as the head of manufacturing for a major American company, however, his goal in agreeing to the interview was to promote the Ford Motor Company.
In arranging the interview, I was very up-front about the nature of the article for which the interview would be used. I wanted to examine the health of manufacturing in America, including the outsourcing of American jobs, the general direction of the economy, and issues relating to those topics. The first sign that I was not going to get a truly candid interview, was that the VP, James Tetreault, had another Ford "spokesperson" on the line as well. This person was more of a PR expert along to make sure that Tetreault did not say anything of which Ford would not approve. Indeed, this person did jump in a couple of times to answer for Tetreault when I challenged his initial response.
I had initially intended the interview to be published as a Q&A piece with my questions and the relevant pieces of the interviewee's answers (edited for clarity and brevity) printed directly with a brief introduction, similar to this Q&A news article. Because of the high level of PR content, some of which was, at best, borderline in terms of being "factually accurate statements," I had to rethink my approach.
I wrote the article on the topic I originally intended, but included a couple of other credible third-party sources to refute one point made by Tetreault, and to buttress the independence of the article. However, I wrote the article in a more narrative form, using direct quotes from Tetreault, but not in a strict Q&A format. Much of the interview content turned out to be unusable for my purposes.
It is not always necessary to portray the interviewee or their company in a positive light. For example, if you happened to get an interview with the former BP CEO on the golf course shortly after the BP gulf oil well disaster, as a journalist, "You have to go beyond his statements that everything is under control and it's just a little bit of oil leaking out right now. Nothing to worry about." However, portraying an interviewee negatively may have repercussions as well.
In the case of the Ford interview I conducted, I researched some basic facts before the interview. When the VP said Ford's success in the first part of the year was due more to Ford's product assortment than to a more broad based upturn in economic conditions, I was able to counter with the fact that Ford's competitors had at least equal, and in many cases better overall sales increases during the same period. I pointed this out to him directly in the interview and included it in the article.
The use of qualified third-party experts can add significant credibility to a news article, but if you act as a shill for the interviewee's company, it can have the opposite effect.
Sometimes that purpose is simply to gain name recognition or to keep the name of their organization in the public eye. Sometimes, though, especially with people representing commercial operations, the sole purpose for granting an interview is to paint their company in a positive light for a free commercial. That's certainly their right. As journalists, though, we are not in the business of writing commercials for publication on news channels.
When the interview is giving a company a direct opportunity to refute some allegation against the company, then these PR statements can be of direct use as the official company response to some accusation or situation which casts them in a negative light. When we are asking for their expertise on a matter either not related or only peripherally related to the company in question, however, such scripted responses are of marginal use.
It is our job to cut through the company line to find real information that is of value to readers. For example, I recently had the opportunity to interview the Vice President of North American Manufacturing from the Ford Motor Company for a news article about the state of American manufacturing. He was certainly qualified to speak on the subject as the head of manufacturing for a major American company, however, his goal in agreeing to the interview was to promote the Ford Motor Company.
In arranging the interview, I was very up-front about the nature of the article for which the interview would be used. I wanted to examine the health of manufacturing in America, including the outsourcing of American jobs, the general direction of the economy, and issues relating to those topics. The first sign that I was not going to get a truly candid interview, was that the VP, James Tetreault, had another Ford "spokesperson" on the line as well. This person was more of a PR expert along to make sure that Tetreault did not say anything of which Ford would not approve. Indeed, this person did jump in a couple of times to answer for Tetreault when I challenged his initial response.
I had initially intended the interview to be published as a Q&A piece with my questions and the relevant pieces of the interviewee's answers (edited for clarity and brevity) printed directly with a brief introduction, similar to this Q&A news article. Because of the high level of PR content, some of which was, at best, borderline in terms of being "factually accurate statements," I had to rethink my approach.
I wrote the article on the topic I originally intended, but included a couple of other credible third-party sources to refute one point made by Tetreault, and to buttress the independence of the article. However, I wrote the article in a more narrative form, using direct quotes from Tetreault, but not in a strict Q&A format. Much of the interview content turned out to be unusable for my purposes.
It is not always necessary to portray the interviewee or their company in a positive light. For example, if you happened to get an interview with the former BP CEO on the golf course shortly after the BP gulf oil well disaster, as a journalist, "You have to go beyond his statements that everything is under control and it's just a little bit of oil leaking out right now. Nothing to worry about." However, portraying an interviewee negatively may have repercussions as well.
In the case of the Ford interview I conducted, I researched some basic facts before the interview. When the VP said Ford's success in the first part of the year was due more to Ford's product assortment than to a more broad based upturn in economic conditions, I was able to counter with the fact that Ford's competitors had at least equal, and in many cases better overall sales increases during the same period. I pointed this out to him directly in the interview and included it in the article.
The use of qualified third-party experts can add significant credibility to a news article, but if you act as a shill for the interviewee's company, it can have the opposite effect.
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