'I also use
e-mail in the cases where a subject of a story has declined to speak to me, and his or her spokesman has asked that I send questions via
e-mail.'

- Christine McConville,
Reporter,
Boston Herald

'You can never know if the person is actually responding … (I)f you are trying to contact a politician, another person could be responding for them.'

- Paul Pronovost,
Editor,
Cape Cod Times
of Hyannis, Mass.

E-mail interviews: Easy,
efficient and edged in peril

By Clarice Connors
Bulletin Staff

A typed series of questions, a mouse click, and an Internet connection are sometimes the easiest ways to acquire information in the 21st century. But the easiest way might not always be the best way.

For many people, e-mail provides easy access to others through a keyboard and a cable. For journalists, e-mail poses threats to the integrity and art of interviewing.

Keeping up with technology, journalists added digital audio recorders and e-mail to their reporting tools of pencils and notepads.

Robert Long, managing editor at The Times Record of Brunswick, Maine, and a journalist for 11 years, said the Times Record does not prohibit e-mail interviews, but he personally encourages reporters to refrain from e-mail interviews.

“Only as a last resort do we use e-mail, and not for interviews,” he said. “Primarily, e-mail is used to confirm information.”

Long’s unease is for journalism as a whole.

“I am concerned that the integrity of the interview process can be undermined by excess reliance on e-mail,” he said. “How does one know if an e-mail response makes a source react in a way that would spur a follow-up question in person?”

Paul Pronovost, editor of the Cape Cod Times of Hyannis, Mass., hesitates to dismiss the practice of e-mail interviews, yet he also views it as a last option. Pronovost acknowledges that a reporter can’t always be present in person to capture emotion, but he or she “can certainly attempt to convey that with their words” when writing an article through description and attention to detail.

An e-mail interview involves typed questions and answers — an exchange of inquiry and information.

The interview process for a journalist, however, should be more than just an exchange via Internet, and editors are communicating that.

Pronovost said he knows the many cons and few pros of e-mail interviews after being in the newspaper business for 17 years.

“With a personal interview, you can pick up nuances, body language and how the response is framed, allowing you to put everything into better context,” Pronovost said.

An interview subject can easily delete and edit an interview response before sending it back to the reporter.

Pronovost acknowledged another potential problem with using e-mail interviews: “You can never know if the person is actually responding … (I)f you are trying to contact a politician, another person could be responding for them.”

Rick Fabrizio, managing editor for news at the daily Portsmouth (N.H) Herald, stresses the importance of being at the scene and interviewing in person.

“The devil is in the details,” he said. “E-mail can be in the proverbial toolbox, and will increasingly become an acceptable means of communicating and interviewing, but it is still better to have the person on the phone or in person.”

A dry e-mail of well-crafted answers might provide information, yet might not capture the color and personality of an in-person interview.

“You have to be careful when you pull that tool out of the box,” Fabrizio said of e-mail interviews.

Fabrizio mentioned another complication to e-mail interviews: developing sources. Journalists use face time to connect and network. Face time with a source can solidify a relationship.

“E-mail is the cold side of technology, and developing sources is the most important thing in reporting. With e-mails, it is going to be difficult to maintain and create relationships and recognize faces, which is crucial to reporting,” Fabrizio said. “E-mail may be fast and easy, yet it lacks the vitality of a live interview.”

For reporters such as Christine McConville of the Boston Herald, the use of e-mail for interviews proves to be helpful, but not typically the first-choice method.

McConville usually uses e-mail only to confirm and check information, but she has made a few exceptions.

“Most people who are being interviewed need to talk through the issues, so it is best to interview them in person,” McConville said.

McConville has also encountered challenging situations as a reporter that required more than a face-to-face conversation.

“I also use e-mail in the cases where a subject of a story has declined to speak to me, and his or her spokesman has asked that I send questions via e-mail. This usually happens with investigative stories, and the person being targeted wants a paper trail of the correspondence,” McConville said.

McConville recognizes the importance of in-person interviews and lists “the ability to focus on the subject, and really listen to the subject” as a journalist’s greatest asset.

Journalists use e-mail interviews and correspondence as a tool, while the public uses it as a main form of communication.

With both the news industry and everyday life demanding information at a faster rate and in simpler form, will journalists have to sacrifice quality for efficiency?

Rick Fabrizio doesn’t think so.

“I don’t see us getting to the point where e-mail is all we use,” he said. “Otherwise we will lose a big part of journalism.”

POSTED 5/21/09

'Only as a last resort do we use e-mail, and not for interviews. Primarily,
e-mail is used to confirm information.'

- Robert Long,
Managing editor,
The Times Record
of Brunswick, Maine