On the Email Interview
There are plenty of things to be said against the email interview: it lacks tone; it’s not spur of the moment enough; it’s just plain lazy. Yeah, but no transcribing! No dealing with actual real people! I say that it’s a treat.
I, however, am not usually correct. Donna Talarico at Absolute Write discusses why person-to-person is best:
True– you can get a hint of someone’s personality through reading what he wrote. But in a set of interview questions, there is not much you can gain in the way of telling a subject’s personality. Does he laugh a lot? Does he smile a lot? Is he animated? Aside from his personality, how does he look? What is he wearing? Is he wearing a favorite hat? Maybe there is a story in that! These are all wonderful things you can describe in an article. In my article about Mr. Butler, I painted him as a wise old man who smiled often, showing years of laugh lines. In addition, Mr. Butler did cough and clear his throat many times– he has asthma. He’s also 86 and very frail, so I was able to bring that in, which lent itself very well to the whole story of him preserving a legacy– but also that he was ready to take his own spot in history.
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