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Craft of Writing

Diana K. Serquina

Conducting Successful Long-Distance Interviews

In today’s world, much of our personal and professional communication takes place by telephone or e-mail. For many freelance writers, this means doing interviews for articles by telephone or e-mail instead of in person.

(One quick note before we move on to the topic of how to conduct “remote” interviews: It’s not always best to do interviews by phone or e-mail. If your interview subject is local and you will learn things from the unspoken parts of an interview — body language, facial expressions, the subject’s home or work environment — then it’s worth doing the interview in person even if the telephone or e-mail seems more convenient.)

If you live in Nebraska and your interviewee is on one of the coasts, or if you’re simply looking for facts and don’t need emotional insights into your subject, you can often make things easier for yourself and your interviewee if you conduct the interview by telephone or e-mail.

One of the most obvious advantages of e-mail is that even if your schedule is incompatible with your interviewee’s, you can still get the interview done. Often, an e-mail interview may get finished more quickly than if you’d had to wait for a mutually agreeable time to talk. However, that’s only the case if your subject responds to your e-mail in a timely fashion — and some will not. Be prepared to follow up with a reminder e-mail, or by telephone, if you don’t get a response as your deadline approaches.

How To Prepare
For telephone interviews, you need to be as prepared as you would be if you were conducting the interview in person. Have your list of questions ready, and be familiar with any background information relevant to the interview. While you don’t have to dress up for a telephone interview, you should be sure that even if you’re wearing sweatpants and an old T-shirt, you sound as professional as if you were in a business suit.

If your interviewee agrees, recording your telephone interview is a good idea. Don’t rely on it, in case you experience a technical problem (or operator error) that leaves you with an incomplete or unusable recording, but a tape can be a good backup to your notes — especially if you don’t write as quickly as your source speaks (which will be the case for most of us).

For an e-mail interview, the preparation is a bit different. You should still be familiar with any relevant background, so that your questions don’t show that you neglected your research. However, you can take your time phrasing the questions the best way and, likewise, when you get the answers back, you can take some time to frame any follow-up questions. This is one of the best aspects of e-mail interviews. In e-mail, there are no awkward pauses, no casual filler words like “um” or “you know” that creep into spoken conversation. E-mail interviews are also especially helpful to a new interviewer who may be nervous about the interview and thus may have more trouble sounding confident and professional.

Keep It Professional
There are many things that can undermine your credibility with a source when you conduct any interview, but there are some pitfalls specific to e-mail and telephone interviews.

For e-mail interviews, edit your e-mail as carefully as you will edit the finished article. Nothing makes a poorer impression on people than receiving a list of questions and comments with spelling or grammatical errors. After all, you’re a writer — they should be able to expect all of your written communication to be technically correct. Use your spell-check function, but also pay close attention to things it won’t catch, like the spelling of your contact’s name and any company names.

If you’re doing a telephone interview from your home, be sure you minimize background noise. If you have children, try to make telephone calls during their naps or while they are at school, playing outside (with someone else’s supervision if they are small), or otherwise out of earshot. (This is also a good idea when making any professional calls. Even if your editor knows you work from home and are a parent, he or she is unlikely to be favorably impressed by screaming children or “Sesame Street” blaring in the background of your conversation about your latest project.)

How To Follow Up
If you’re doing an interview by phone, make sure you thank your subject for his or her time at the end of the interview, just as you would in person. It’s a good idea to ask when would be a good time for you to call back if you have follow-up questions as you work on the article. That way if you do think of something that you forgot to ask, you have paved the way for a second call and it will be less awkward.

If the interview is by e-mail, you should still thank the subject for his or her time. While you won’t need to ask about a good time to call back, it’s wise to include a sentence indicating that if you have any additional questions, you’ll send a follow-up e-mail.

Regardless of the interview medium, you should let your subject know when you expect the article to run, and offer to provide a copy of it. Sometimes you can have your editor send a copy directly to the subject, and sometimes you’ll need to take care of this yourself. While it’s not strictly required, it does tend to keep your subjects happy, which makes them more willing to be interviewed again in the future.

If you make an effort to remain professional, you will probably find that telephone and e-mail interviews will save you time and money, and allow you to complete more articles in less time. Once you’re comfortable interviewing in this fashion, it will also open new article topics to you, because you won’t need to stick to subjects for which you have experts available locally.

About The Author
Diana K. Serquina is a freelance writer living in Spokane, Washington. She has written for a variety of magazines and newspapers, and is currently a columnist for the Great Falls (Montana) Tribune. She conducts most of her interviews by e-mail.