Paul Signorelli agreed to demonstrate the use of online chat for conducting interviews on October 12, 2009 for the staff of the Vegas Times. Full text of the interview is available here.
Paul Signorelli, a consultant-trainer-writer, has more than 20 years of experience working for libraries and nonprofit organizations and will complete work on his Master of Library and Information Sciences degree in December 2009 through the University of North Texas distance learning program.
He began writing while earning his B.A. in Political Science; he served as a reporter, then an editor, for UCLA’s Daily Bruin. His first professional newspaper job was for a small regional news service in California’s Central Valley, where he worked on a manual Underwood typewriter, cutting and pasting first drafts together when cut-and-paste involved scissors, paper, and Scotch tape, and then rekeyed the completed stories into an antiquated teletype machine to send them to the out of town newspapers for which he wrote.
He notes that things have changed a bit since then: he now routinely uses Google Chat, Yahoo Messenger, and WebEx as tools for conducting interviews with subjects all over the country, and recently successfully completed an online interview with a source in the suburbs of Paris for an article scheduled for publication online this month. He and his writing partner (Lori Reed, Employee Learning & Development Coordinator for the Public Library of Charlotte & Mecklenburg County) are using similar interviewing tools and shared online documents to complete an entire book for ALA (American Library Association) Editions, and they also used online tools to prepare a PowerPoint slide show for a live session they delivered at the 2009 ALA Annual Conference in Chicago.
Contact information:
Web site
E-mail: paul@paulsignorelli.com
Hey I really enjoy the all the helpful hints. I will check into the book Joe Navarro’s ” What Every Body Is Saying.”
What is your Twitter name?
Thank you!
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Paul Signorelli Reply:
October 15th, 2009 at 12:41 am
Hope you enjoy Navarro’s book; it’s one of many great resources out there. As for Twitter: haven’t fallen under the spell yet, so don’t have a Twitter name. (Too busy trying to keep up with other things to try to add that to the mix at this point.)
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I would like to first thank Paul Signorelli for taking the time to share his knowledge of digital interviewing. I am very reluctant to conduct an online interview because I feel the personality of the interviewee will be lost in the web. Yet, Signorelli reassured that individuals are extremely cautious at first, but as they become more comfortable with online interviewing they loosen up some. I am still wary of this form of conducting interviews, yet he opened my eyes up to the possibility. In this digital age, it may soon become the norm; thus, it doesn’t hurt to understand the basics of the tool nonetheless.
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I understand why Signorelli tells his interviewees not to worry about spelling. It speeds up the chat interviewing process. However, correcting mistakes before press time involves a few rules.
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Your insight into the use and benefits of interviews conducted via is greatly appreciated. Preparing questions before the interview is an effective tool that allows the interviewer time to review while the interviewee responds.
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I think the tip about having your questions and follow-ups typed up in a word document, and having them organized, before the interview starts is important. But, as Paul Signorelli metioned, we should also ’sound’ conversational.
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Really appreciate seeing the immediate reactions. Carsla’s note reminds us that online interviewing isn’t something that you just dive into quickly, expecting it to be completely comfortable; like any skill, it becomes easier over time, and I’m still learning ways to use it more effectively. The sense of flexibility which Rebecca, Danielle, and Hector all implicitly acknowledge is also important in online interviewing–but I don’t think that’s much different than what is required in more traditional settings. News and feature-writing assignments create their own structure: if you are pursuing a story, you already have an idea of what you’re looking for, and that guides you in having a set of questions to be answered. The online format simply requires a bit more effort getting those initial thoughts down before you start the interview, and then you deviate from the script as needed to draw the information out from your sources in a useful (conversational) way. A very useful tip from many people I’ve admired: when you write something (in this situation, questions for an online interview) read it out loud before you use it. That’s a great way to spot problems and to resolve them (through rewrites) before you move ahead.
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Thanks for talking to us Paul. I think online interviews have it’s pros and cons, the same with in-person interviews. I think it’s just a matter of preference and mastery.
Now that I know online interviews is an option that professionals approve of, I’m going to have to try it out sometime.
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I’ll also add that you will find many people who are already accustomed to communicating this way. In fact Paul and I became great friends before we ever met in person–through chat and email. When you add in options such as video chat through Google or Skype (which are free but you both need a web cam) it really feels as if you are there with the person and you don’t lose the facial expressions and other things that you get in a face to face interview. To those who are hesitant give it a chance with family and friends or low priority stories before moving to chat for a high priority story. And feel free to chat with me anytime through my website!
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I really enjoyed this demonstration today. It was absolutely intriguing to see how you can have a guest speaker minus the actual speaking part. This was a really cool lecture, even if I had to read the subtitles.
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Thank you Paul for taking time to talk to our class. I was skeptical about Google talk and after the discussion I was very excited to use Google talk. Your insights how to conduct an online interview were very helpful and I be sure to pass those along to others.
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I loved listening to Paul’s thoughts. I’ve interviewed several individuals online in the past, and plan to interview several more in the future. He had some great insights and really helpful tips. I can’t wait to put them into practice with my next interview! Thanks for sharing your experience with us, Paul.
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Thank you for taking the time to chat with us, Paul. I was wondering, since you’ve been conducting interviews online for a while now, do you prefer it? Or would you rather be doing all your interviews in-person if you had your way?
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Paul really made me think about using all of your resources during an online interview. You could have a browser open looking up facts or information, you could have a window with your follow up questions, and you could also be looking back on the chatlog so far.
Thanks, Paul.
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Janelle, Jachelle, and Roze:
OMG, Lori Reed found us here. Now worlds really are going to collide.
Thanks to everyone for all the wonderful feedback–particularly your willingness to experiment, as Lori and I have, with this format and see how you can shape it to meet your own needs.
Responding to Roze’s question: while I adore face to face interactions and interviews, I’ve really done the bulk of my interviewing online this year for articles, research papers, blog pieces, and the book Lori and I are co-writing because I love the transcripts they provide. Even if technology gave us a tool that provided immediate transcripts from spoken interviews, I suspect, at this point, that I would use a combination of online and face to face interviewing because that widens the possibilities for reaching the right sources regardless of geography–which was the case with the French educator (Julien Llanas), a New York-based educator, and several others who were sources for a feature article on innovations in e-learning. Much as I would have loved to have been sitting across from Julien in a Paris cafe for our interview, I’ve yet to find an editor or publisher who would underwrite my work at that level.
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Paul Signorelli Reply:
October 16th, 2009 at 12:13 am
Sorry, Janell, for mispelling your name. Should have proofed that response a bit more before posting it.
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I would like to thank Paul Signorelli for taking the time to speak with our class about interviewing and the techniques he uses. I found it very helpful. Especially his idea about preparing the next question when the interviewee is answering the last question because I often find that I become overwhelmed when conducting an interview via live video or IM. I also really appreciated the tip he gave about the book on body language. I think everyone can benefit from a book like that, even if it is just for fun.
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Thank you Paul for the great advice. I conducted an interview recently using Skype and I’m so glad I prepared a list of questions beforehand. It went so much smoother. I hope to conduct more interviews using this sort of technology. The transcript makes my life so much easier.
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Considering that I’m a novice in using any kind of online program to conduct my interviews, all of the advice that Paul gave. I like the idea of it being a little more informal than face-to-face interviews because often I get nervous and tounge-tied and online interviews prevent that. It really reminds me of when instant messanger became so popular in high school. I never considered it to be educational and a good way to find sources.
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