All have been edited for length and clarity.Įditor-at-large, Recode contributing opinion writer, The New York Times Most of these testimonials came via email some are excerpts from phone interviews, which were not recorded. Jean Carroll prefers to videotape her interview subjects with her smartphone so she can capture facial expressions, which often serve as psychological tells.īelow are testimonials from 18 journalists. Gay Talese, for example, is vehemently opposed to tape recorders-and views their widespread use as the death knell of literary reportage-while E. How journalists memorialize their interviews seems to be divided, in many ways, along generational lines, with older reporters relying more on their notebooks and younger reporters clinging to their recording devices, which were once clunky and somewhat forbidding but came into wider use around the end of the 20th century with the advent of digital technology. ICYMI: Top journalists reveal the best reporting advice they have received That isn’t to say it’s the norm, but interviewing practices vary, primarily because journalism, unlike law or medicine, is an intuitive profession that requires no formal training (for better or worse). Putting aside the issue of plagiarism, the truth is that, depending on the circumstances, many journalists do not record their interviews. That she was accused, the next day, of plagiarizing passages in her new book on the media industry, Merchants of Truth, only added to the impression that the former executive editor of The New York Times plays it fast and loose. “I’m a very fast note-taker,” she said in a staid Q&A that generated a mudslide of online criticism from those who took Abramson’s admission as evidence of recklessness.
In early February, Jill Abramson told The Cut that she had never recorded an interview in her decades-long career as a journalist.