April 5th, 2008 Great interview questions for feature stories
We interview a lot of people, but unlike some newspaper reporting, the profile feature article needs to get to the core of the story subject — find out what makes a business owner tick. Wouldn’t it be great if you could just ask, “What makes you tick?” And the subject went on for 20 minutes on what makes him/her really article-worthy?
Doesn’t happen. So what do you ask to really get the good stuff? I just heard a good one — What two or three things about your business really keep you up at night? What’s your favorite interview question?
Posted by
tradepressed at 02:24 pm | Filed under: Writing
on April 11th, 2008 at 10:44 am
This is a great question, and it caught my attention right away. One thing I can think of off the top of my head is the question I end every interview with: “Is there anything else important that you can think of that we didn’t cover?” Usually, there isn’t anything else that’s new, but the person tends to recap what they felt was the most important point or points, in a more succinct and colorful way. I often end up using these tail-end of the interview quotes. I’m really interested to hear what other people have to say, though. The one about what keeps them up at night is great. I will definitely use that.
on April 14th, 2008 at 1:13 pm
I like, “What is the one thing people should know about what you do, but don’t?” One that can be fun is to ask people what superpower would help them most in the course of their daily work, and why. You may not get anything usable, but it can loosen them up a bit.