It’s a matter of personal taste, I know, but whenever I’m reading an interview, the last person I want to be aware of is the interviewer.
There are exceptions, of course; TV writer Graeme Kibble-White wrote a fascinating article for Doctor Who Magazine a while back about the evolving relationship between himself (as a journalist) and the show’s then-star, Matt Smith.
For the most part, though, I don’t care about what an interviewer had for breakfast or whether or not they got stuck in the morning rush-hour on the way to the interview.
I don’t even particularly want to know what they think of the person on the other end of their dictaphone or smartphone. I want to form my own opinion from what the person says.
That’s as a reader. So, what’s my approach to interviews as a journalist?
Down the years I’ve interviewed a wide range of people for a diverse selection of publications – Westminster politicians, American space scientists, numerous performers plugging their latest shows, and members of the public. What I hope all those published interviews have in common – apart from matching the expectations of the editors who commissioned them – is that they effectively report what the people said.
Indeed, I experience some satisfaction when someone tells me that a person’s “voice” came across really well in one of my interviews. That said, the satisfaction is tinged with slight puzzlement; after all, shouldn’t it?
Except…
Note that I wrote effectively, back there. Not “accurately”.
The reality, of course, is that I am very much present in any interview I’ve written. I’m “lurking” within the choice of questions asked – even if, most of the time, those are defined by the subjects and “narrative” wanted by the editor who commissioned the article.
And I’m definitely “there” within the subsequent process of transforming what someone said into a written article that not only reads well on the page (whether that’s in print and/or online) but also fits the space allocated to it within the publication.
I don’t think it’s too surprising to admit that the part of my job which I dislike most is transcribing interviews. It’s dull, it’s boring and – worst of all – means listening to myself prattle on. Being essentially rather lazy, I seldom ever transcribe a whole interview; I’ll only take the bits I need for the article which, of course, is – by definition – an editorial intrusion on my part, no matter how “natural” the quotes might appear to run on the page.
Andy Warhol – who is not a cultural figure I particularly admire or respect, but never mind – at one point launched a magazine called inter/VIEW (later Andy Warhol’s Interview). Its USP was that it featured stars interviewing other stars, with the results published verbatum, as transcribed, without any of that pesky “editing” that conventionally turns spontaneous speech into readable prose.
According to biographer Wayne Koestenbaum, inter/VIEW was Warhol’s “most sustained attempt, after a, A Novel to cross the border between tape-recorded speech and the written word: his experiments in bridging this divide involve a serious philosophical quest to figure out where and how verbal meaning breaks down, and to track the imprecise, shiftless way the words occupy the time it takes to utter and understand them. Andy’s intensest experiences were visual, not verbal, yet he remained fascinated by his own difficult, hampered process of verbalization. Interview, an ideal vehicle, allowed him to indulge his interest in dialogue, as well as his desire to bodysnatch reality and to seal it in falsely labeled canisters. Via the technological mediation of tape recorder, Andy hoodwinked time and talk, and canned it as a product bearing his own name.”
Like most of Warhol – indeed, most writing about Warhol – that strikes me as utter wank. Yes, I’d agree that there’s an art – though I’d prefer to call it a “craft” – to creating interviews in prose, but I wouldn’t for a moment think of it being Art itself. (Anyone who does is – and please pardon the use of a technical term here – a pretentious twat.)
More than most, I’m aware how (even within the relatively formalised scenario that is an interview) people’s speech is defined by false starts, broken phrasing, and a slipping from one idea to another mid-sentence. With the exceptions of media-trained politicians and experienced performers, most people seldom speak in grammatically “proper” sentences at all, let alone paragraphs.
So, even when I’m asked to present an interview in a simple Q&A format – which might appear to be the least “edited” format available, though it rarely is – there’s likely to be an inherent degree of artificiality, of “editorialising”, involved.
Certainly, there are serious issues surrounding this; correcting grammar and removing “interview noise” (ie, stutters, pauses, etc.) might seem acceptable, but is it on a slippery slope towards the kind of cultural imperialism that, for example, replaces particular accents and dialects with “standard” English? If my interviewee, for example, speaks Scots, is it wrong for me to present what he said in “standard” English?
Some people would undoubtedly say yes, but for me it would depend quite a lot on the publication and its readership; quite possibly, I would be more inclined to report more of what they said, indirectly, while still keeping certain quotes as close to as they were said as possible. As with most things, it’s a decision I make on a case-by-case basis.
Still, I have little fear of “tidying up” sentences or breaking what people said into paragraphs, if I believe doing so aids clarity and ease of comprehension. If an interviewee essentially repeats certain phrases within a short period, I’ll happily edit two or more sentences down into a “best of” single sentence that covers all the bases.
We all have verbal ticks; my own most annoying (at least to me) is a habit of saying “obviously”, even when something possibly isn’t obvious at all. The question again arises, though; should those be edited out on the grounds of needless, meaningless repetition, or retained as part of someone’s “voice”?
I can only claim that it depends on context; every article is, to an extent, a lesson on how to write that article, and none other. Even now, a lot of the editorial decisions I make – my “presence” within the interview, so to speak –are not consciously considered. It’s just a sense of “what feels right” at the time.
Obviously I’m biased, but I believe I do my job – making what someone said readable and understandable on the page – reasonably well. That people continue to pay me to do that suggests I’m not entirely wrong to think this. But, while I certainly endeavour to never distort “the spirit” of what someone says, “the letter” will never be 100% accurate.
