Reader Feedback: Interviewing
Man, I love it when people write in with some feedback and advice based on their own experiences. Like Felix Salmon, a writer in New York, who has some recommendations when it comes to the tools of the trade:
Solution to all you interview notes problems: iPod with Griffin voice
recorder. Why?
1. Once you put the interview on your hard drive, it’s there forever. The chairman of one of the publications I write for just got a fax from one of my interviewees, saying he was misquoted and asking for a correction. It took me less than 5 minutes to find the interview, transcribe it afresh, and determine that he was quoted absolutely accurately. No rummaging around for old tapes; no risk they’ll get overrecorded; no wondering which tape that interview was on.
2. Backup. You lose your iPod, your interview is still on your computer. And vice versa.
3. Insane amounts of storage space: you never run out of tape. Interviews generally run about 1MB/minute, which means that you can fit over 300 hours of them onto a 20GB iPod.
4. All interviews are automatically time-and-date stamped, so they’re very easy to find if you know when the interview was. When you get to the computer, they’re very easy to rename to the name of the person you interviewed.
5. Easily good enough recording quality. You can put your iPod almost anywhere in a reasonably quiet room, and it will record the whole conversation fine.
6. You get to listen to fabulous music on the way to and from the interview!
Next thing on the wishlist: a device which plugs your iPod into your phone so that you can record phone interviews that way too.
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