In a world where everyone has to have their say, listening has become a lost art. But it is the key to getting the best stories.
A deer with big ears listens for predators. (Credit: Magda Ehlers/Pexels)
Journalism can be a powerful tool for change. But a story won’t spur change if it puts people to sleep or leaves them more confused or discouraged than before they read, heard or saw it. To help you tell stories that are engaging and insightful, News Decoder is launching Top Tips. Each week we will share advice from reporters, editors, writers and master storytellers.
In this Top Tip, News Decoder Educational News Director Marcy Burstiner explains why careful listening is essential to getting good interviews.
Top Tips are part of our open access learning resources. You can find more of our learning resources here. And learn how you can incorporate our resources and services into your classroom or educational program or by forming a News Decoder Club in your school.
One of the most difficult things for a journalist to master is the art of listening.
In the digital age, with people growing up on social media, listening has become a lost art. People post and talk, they record themselves on Tik Tok and Snap and they shoot out tweets (X-es?). In response to other people’s posts they hit a like button.
What they rarely do is engage in meaningful back and forth, because that involves listening to what someone says and thinking about it. Most people, these days, are mostly talk.
A good journalist does little talking. Journalism is about telling other people’s stories. To do that you have to gather stories and you do that by listening to the stories people tell.
It isn’t easy, particularly when the person you listen to isn’t a professional storyteller. The reason journalists tell other people’s stories is because many people don’t have the skill to tell the stories themselves or they don’t have the platform for it.
And it is a reason, I think, that journalism often attracts people, like me, who are actually a bit socially awkward talking to people. In high school, I was the shy kid that let my friends do all the talking. How did I end up in a profession where I was paid to interview people day in and day out?
The answer is that interviewing is not the same as talking or even the same as conversation. In an interview, the journalist asks questions which the person being interviewed answers or chooses not to answer. When done right, the interviewer says little. Some of the best questions take just one or a few words: Why? How? When was that? Were you afraid?
Good questions spur good answers.
When you listen to an interview you can often tell how skilled the interviewer is. The ones that annoy me formulate questions that are longer than the answers. The interviewer feels compelled to throw in their own opinions and thoughts. That becomes more of a conversation.
Those can be interesting, to be sure. But the best interviews are the ones where someone interesting is being interviewed and the interviewer simply lets the person speak and guides the conversation through good questions.
Where does listening come in?
The best questions follow up on what the person has said. The second type of interview that annoys me are the ones where you can tell that the interviewer has prepared a set of questions and doesn’t deviate from them. The person might say something interesting or controversial or surprising but the interviewer doesn’t follow up by having the person explain more or by asking for a clarification or challenging the person.
What happens in those interviews is that the questioner is so focused on the questions they need to ask, that they aren’t fully listening to the answers.
In general, when I do interviews I prepare 5–10 questions. But I rarely get beyond three because the answers to the questions I ask beg for follow-up and we never end up getting to my fourth question.
A good interviewer needs to allow the interview to meander a little to deviate off the topic because the best information you can get from an interview is the surprising stuff that you aren’t prepared for. You couldn’t prepare a question for it because you didn’t know it to begin with.
Those are also the most fun interviews to do. In some ways, a journalist is an explorer. But instead of sailing down a river or crossing deserts or mountains, the uncharted terrain is that of information. You have an idea of what you are searching for, but you need to be prepared for finding a new world that you didn’t even know was there.
And to discover that new information? You need to listen for it.
Three questions to consider:
- Why does the author believe that listening is a lost art?
- Why does careful listening often mean that some prepared questions will not be asked?
- Do you think that you are a good listener? When was the last time you really listened to a story someone tried to tell you?
Marcy Burstiner is the educational news director for News Decoder. She is a graduate of the Columbia Journalism School and professor emeritus of journalism and mass communication at the California Polytechnic University, Humboldt in California. She is the author of the book Investigative Reporting: From premise to publication.