Abstract
Teachers shape how aspiring journalists collect and evaluate information. The primary method journalists employ to gather this information is through the interviewing method. However, research has yet to be conducted on how this important competency is taught in university settings. This study sought to identify the instructional approaches used by print and broadcast journalism educators through qualitative interviews. The results revealed that a variety of exercises and pedagogical approaches (i.e., observation, simulation, direct experience, and reinforcement) are employed by educators to teach students the complexities of the interviewing process. We also highlighted classroom exercises, identified challenges, and shared teaching strategies concerning the teaching of both broadcast and print journalistic interviewing.
Keywords
Described as part art and part science, interviewing is fundamental to the practice of journalism. Interviewing is the primary method journalists use to attain information for stories (Brooks et al., 2008). Interviewing involves a broad and interconnected series of interpersonal interactions that occur simultaneously that require communication skills and professional judgment on the part of the student journalist within varying contexts (Carpenter et al., 2018). As a result, the multidimensional nature associated with the journalistic interviewing process could lead educators down many pedological paths.
This study sought to articulate how contemporary journalism faculty members challenge inexperienced students to move from their comfort zones in order to become better interviewers. Based on qualitative interviews with U.S. journalism educators, we described the methods print and broadcast journalism educators use inside and outside the classroom to help their students become competent interviewers. We also identified the challenges educators encounter in teaching interviewing competencies to young journalists in hopes of making educators and administrators aware of the obstacles that teachers face when teaching it. Given how fundamental interviewing is to the practice of journalism, it is important to evaluate how interviewing is taught and learn from these educators at top journalism programs who teach interviewing. We share teaching approaches and ideas in order to help educators improve the overall quality of news reporting and theoretically understand the various approaches required to effectively teach it.
Pedagogical Approaches to Teaching Interviewing
Medicine and Criminal Justice Interviewing Pedagogy
We sought research and information that could illuminate how journalistic interviewing is taught. However, research on teaching interviewing has not been found within journalism scholarship. The teaching of interviewing competencies is not an area of expertise unique only to journalism education. Within the context of medicine, for example, Zamani et al. (2006) asserted that between 60% and 80% of a diagnosis is based on information gathered during a medical interview. The gathering of information for diagnostic purposes makes teaching interviewing to doctors, nurses, and other types of clinicians a critical endeavor. Various teaching approaches include applying problem-based curricula, observation, and role-playing; using both simulated patients and actual patients in clinical contexts; and offering students real-world interactive-learning experiences (Aspegren, 1999; Benbassat & Baumal, 2009; Lumman-Sellenthin, 2012; Taylor & Berren, 1974). The primary functions of these courses are to train physicians to be more empathetic and help them relate to a patient (Jackson & Black, 2011; Zamani et al., 2006), which can lead to improved patient care (Aspegren, 1999; Bryson-Brockmann & Fishbein, 1995). Although it is a role tertiary to the practice of medicine, many medical schools build entire courses into their curriculum dedicated to patient interviewing. Most educational research showed that simulation and observation are the dominant approaches to teaching interviewing to medicine and criminal justice students.
Observation
Learning through observation allows students to witness proper techniques and behaviors associated with interviewing, before they themselves have to act out the techniques and behaviors associated with interviewing. Research indicates that observation can be particularly effective when first introducing the concept of interviewing to students unfamiliar with the practice (Vaughan & Marks, 1976). Observation, followed by providing critiques of recorded interviews, has been a common practice of clinical interviewing instruction since the 1960s (Aspegren, 1999). Reflection and discussion on students’ observations encourage them to synthesize the task of interviewing and set appropriate expectations for when they fill the role as interviewer in the future (Vaughan & Marks, 1976). While Bandura and Walters (1963) asserted that observation is the first step in learning, there are limitations to this approach. Observation is limited because it distances the student from the practice of interviewing. Rowles and Russo (2013) suggested that showing the steps of how to interview someone can be effective in helping students become aware of the complexity of the skill initially; however, students can become disengaged from learning if they simply are observing without the reinforcement of direct experience.
Simulation
Simulation is a technique in which students imitate behaviors based on a particular hypothetical context for the purposes of training them. They acquire their skills through experiencing a situation that they could encounter in their professional lives. Simulation provides opportunities to enact concepts in a controlled and safe environment in hopes that students will be able to apply that theoretical knowledge in practice by being able to respond to practiced situations such as confrontational or shy news sources (Bradley, 2006; Hawkins et al., 2008). Aspirational journalists often are taught how to adjust their questioning strategies based on human reactive behaviors and communication contexts while ensuring that they adhere to particular sets of ethical standards guiding their interviewing behaviors including an adherence to accuracy (Feldstein, 2004).
In simulations, students often are assigned particular roles in which they adjust their behaviors according to context and people’s backgrounds. Role-playing is a type of simulation approach that involves students participating in and practicing the skill that is to be learned within an artificial environment such as a classroom. Baile and Blatner (2014) posited that role-playing is an ideal approach in effectively teaching communication skills such as interviewing because it allows the students to become comfortable with interviewing in a peer-based setting. To that end, the teaching of interviewing through role-playing has been shown to increase a student’s communication self-efficacy leading to greater success in actual interviewing scenarios (Baile & Blatner, 2014; Lumma-Sellenthin, 2012; Zamani et al., 2006). Rasche et al. (1974) found a positive correlation between the amount of practice medical students had with interviewing and their ability to attain relevant and accurate information from patients. Role-playing exercises can provide scenarios in which students encounter conflict or extreme emotions, which could help students understand how to handle the complexity of human behaviors that occur during such social interactions. Ideally, role-playing should take place in small groups so that everyone has ample opportunity to participate in an exercise because small groups can create a safe and inclusive environment where students feel safe to explore unfamiliar concepts (Rowles & Russo, 2013).
Journalism Interviewing Pedagogy
Despite no research found within journalism contexts, basic news reporting textbooks do provide some insights regarding recommended teaching approaches. Regardless of the medium for which the journalism textbooks are written, most introductory journalism texts dedicate at least one chapter specifically to interviewing. Chapters on interviewing cover a broad range of materials related to the art of interviewing such as organizing questions, taking notes, presenting a professional demeanor during an interview, dealing with difficult sources, asking the right types of questions to elicit citable information, conducting research to gather background information on their subjects, verifying the accuracy of the information heard during an interview, and handling video camera equipment during an interview (Barnas, 2013; Bender, Davenport, Drager, & Fedler, 2016; Brooks et al., 2008; Harcup, 2015; Pape & Featherstone, 2005; Reardon & Flynn, 2013; Shook, Larson, & DeTarsio, 2013). One of the most revealing sections of reporting textbooks in understanding how interviewing is taught can be found in the section on authors’ teaching exercises at the end of chapters. Based on a review of textbooks, it appears that authors included interviewing exercises that represented observation, simulation, and direct experience pedagogical approaches.
Observation
The observation method enables students to observe interviews for learning purposes. Reporting textbook authors often provide students with interview examples. Interview examples, in the form of interview transcripts or video recordings, expose students to common interactions that occur between interviewer and interviewee, and these exercises reinforce the importance of how questions are asked to extract newsworthy information from a news source. These exercises often ask students to craft a story based on a transcript or a video. Many exercises also requested students to create a list of interview questions based on this information because such exercises allow students to consider how interview context influences the types of questions that are asked such as a profile story, a press conference interview, or a person experiencing a crisis situation (Barnas, 2013, Bender, Davenport, Drager, & Fedler, 2016; Brooks et al., 2008; Filak, 2019; Harcup, 2015; Pape & Featherstone, 2005; Shook, Larson, & DeTarsio, 2013).
Simulation
Reporting texts also suggested using a simulation approach to teaching interviewing to inexperienced journalism students. Simulation exercises create artificial situations in which students practice the art of interviewing for themselves rather than just observing an interview as a spectator. For example, exercises asked students to interview classmates and then make news judgments about the collected information, write a story based on the interview, and then the interviewed classmate also could evaluate the accuracy of the story (Bender, Davenport, Drager, & Fedler, 2016; Brooks et al., 2008; Harcup, 2015; Sissons, 2006).
Direct experience
Direct experience is another approach that can be found in reporting texts. In simulation and direct experience approaches, students act as the interviewer; however, in direct experience exercises, students are interviewing actual sources rather than their classmates as they would in simulated approaches. For example, students could interview a local official who is accustomed to being interviewed and they could also ask that official about journalism interviewing best practices (Bender, Davenport, Drager, & Fedler, 2016; Halpern-Wenger & Potter, 2019; Harcup, 2015; Pape & Featherstone, 2005). To this end, educators can employ multiple approaches to teaching interviewing. The strategies to teaching journalistic interviewing, however, have yet to be investigated in the field of journalism.
Pedagogical Challenges
Given the complexity of the interviewing process, it is important to identify challenges educators may face when teaching it in order to help them better design assignments and exercises. While there are various other reporting and technology competencies needing to be taught, it follows that time constraints may be a challenge for educators. The amount of allotted time is an indicator in academic settings that conveys the importance of a particular subject or skill to the program (Aspegren, 1999; Baile & Blatner, 2014; Zamani et al., 2006). A proper amount of time is important because Lumma-Sellenthin (2012) found that medical students in programs that emphasized interviewing communication skills were more likely to possess positive attitudes about interviewing than students in programs that did not place a high level of importance on interviewing. Considering all the other aspects of news reporting, writing, digital media, and media production skills that need to be taught throughout the course of a semester, this study sought to identify the challenges educators face when teaching interviewing competencies.
Broadcast Interviewing Pedagogy
Although fundamentally based on the same journalistic principles such as fairness and accuracy, there are likely differences between print (e.g., newspaper, magazine) and broadcast (e.g., television, radio, podcast) interviewing. The very nature of the media dictate a different style of interviewing sources, which may have a notable impact on the ways that interviewing is taught (Carpenter et al., 2018; Ekström & Fitzgerald, 2014). For example, broadcast journalists need to learn the art of performance and timing during live broadcast interviews, including learning how to effectively interview someone while recording and lighting equipment are present. Additionally, broadcast journalists need to be taught tactics associated with performance, such as asking questions that elicit interesting responses, maintaining eye contact, keeping the interviewee on topic, and learning how to manage confrontational or evasive sources during live broadcasts (Ekström & Fitzgerald, 2014; Sedorkin, 2011). Technical equipment knowledge and sound bite length also factor into how students carry out an interview when it is prerecorded. Some technical considerations include learning to how to interview in windy conditions, setting up lighting equipment, and framing a subject within a camera lens while conducting an interview (Freedman, 2011; Shook, Larson, & DeTarsio, 2013).
Method
We conducted semi-structured phone and face-to-face interviews with U.S. journalism educators to identify how they teach journalism interviewing competencies to students. Semi-structured interviews are useful when the literature reveals that more needs to be known about the subject (Ryan et al., 2009).
Sample
In total, we interviewed 11 educators, 6 focused on teaching the print medium and 5 concentrated on broadcast. The age range was between 39 and 66 with a mean of 57. Their professional journalism experience ranged from 2 to 50 years, and all except one possessed at least 5 years of experience as a journalism educator. Geographically, one educator was from the Pacific Northwest, one from the West, one from the Southwest, two from the South, two from the Midwest, and four from the Northeast. Seven of the educators earned undergraduate degrees in journalism while the other four earned degrees in communication, history, organizational studies, and political science.
Sampling Procedure
We identified faculty members who taught interviewing from 22 top journalism schools across the United States ranked based on their history and national reputation (Rosenstiel et al., 2015). We contacted the director, chairperson, or a known faculty member at each journalism school or department requesting the name of the individual primarily responsible for teaching interviewing. Based on their responses, we sent email invitations to 19 faculty members. Of the faculty members invited, seven responded to our interview requests. To increase our response rate, we invited educators who taught interviewing to participate at the annual Broadcast Education Association conference. In total, we interviewed 11 educators about their pedagogical strategies to teaching journalistic interviewing competencies, which is in line with sample size recommendations by interviewing methodologists (e.g., Boyd, 2001 [2–10 participants]; Creswell, 1998 [5–25 participants]; Guest et al., 2006 [12 participants]; Thomas & Pollo, 2002 [6–12 participants]). We asked the educators questions about teaching interviewing, teaching exercises, the challenges associated with teaching it, and the differences between broadcast and print (e.g., “What assignments do you employ to help students improve their interviewing competencies?”). We conducted educator interviews during a 4-month time period between February 4, 2016, and May 3, 2016. Interviews with journalism educators averaged 42 min.
We relied on audio transcription services to transcribe the interview files for the thematic coding process. The transcripts were read and reread, and one researcher labeled the responses with key words and then categorized responses into meaningful categories or themes with the overarching theoretical goal of identifying the ways instructors taught journalistic interviewing. The instructors’ responses were compared within and across transcripts. Based on the responses regarding how they taught interviewing and the patterns across responses, we found several reoccurring patterns across responses that also aligned with pedagogy literature. The interviewees’ responses were formally categorized into pedagogical themes and teaching challenges categories concerning the teaching of journalistic interviewing to their students. As part of an interrater reliability check, a second coder reviewed the individual codes, and we discussed any disagreements, agreements, and questions concerning the coding procedures.
Results and Discussion
Based on a thematic analysis examining the pedagogical approaches that educators employ to teach journalistic interviewing, the results revealed support for four different approaches: observation (n = 3), simulation (n = 10), direct experience (n = 10), and reinforcement (n = 10). We overview each approach in a logical progression if educators should choose to adopt a multimodal approach when teaching interviewing.
Observation
A few educators discussed using observation teaching exercises as an initial approach to teaching interviewing in which students learn behaviors by watching others. Observation allows the educator to selectively expose students to techniques meant to form good interviewing techniques and habits. The act of demonstrating what a quality interview should resemble gives students a better understanding of how to conduct an interview.
In the context of this study, task-oriented pieces of knowledge (e.g., interacting at press conferences) are transferred from an educator to a student through the observational approach (MacKeracher, 2004). The rationale behind the observational approach is that if a student sees how successful interviews are executed, they can begin to visualize themselves in the role of an interviewer (Bandura, 1978). One educator enacted the observational experience by bringing students to press conferences so that they could observe professional journalists’ interactions with news sources: I take them to the press conference after the game. I bring them to the game. I bring them to cultures, interview sessions, so they get to see what that’s like. I would say maybe in some cases that’s eye opening for them. They don’t realize that there’s a structure to college sports, there’s a formal interview session right after the game that you’re a part of. (#2) …they have not come across the myriad of scenarios that we do in the business. There’s just so many different emotional situations that you might find your subject in and sometimes they’re joyous and sometimes they’re tragic, and there’s a lot of in-between. (#2)
Simulation
Simulation is a progressive process in which individuals begin to experiment with their own behaviors, by modeling their interactions based on behaviors they have observed (Latham & Saari, 1979). Specifically, simulation allows the student to gain direct experience by applying previously observed journalistic interviewing tactics. Educator #1 reinforced its importance stating, “they learn by doing. Actually, that’s the motto of our department, learn by doing.” Almost all of the educators interviewed indicated that they used role-playing in teaching interviewing. Role-playing gives students experience interviewing, usually each other. For the very basic, the first-level, beginning reporting classes, I will have them pair up with someone they don’t know well in class and spend half an hour or so talking with that person and trying to find out what might be newsworthy about that person. By that point, we would have already covered the elements of news, what makes something newsworthy. And so then, they would have to spend this time trying to dig out some information from the partner that they’re paired with about what that person might have done that might be used one day and worth writing about. And then I’ll have them come back in and write a few paragraphs, describing what’s newsworthy about their partner…. (#3) I have actually done mock news conferences where I pretend that I’m announcing something. At one time, this has been quite a while ago, but one time, I did a mock news conference where I announced that I was running for mayor and then they had to follow up by asking a series of questions. (#3) I’ll tell them, say a certain politician, will be in town briefly and so they need to devise a list of questions. And I’ll have them go online and do a little background research about what that particular politician is up to at any given time and then have them device a list of questions that they might ask. I find some common problems in interviewing. I probably can’t think of them all off the top of my head, but asking only close-ended questions; not listening to what the person says and following up; not being well prepared and asking stupid questions; not knowing how to operate your equipment; and taking up way too much time trying to get your microphone to work or your recorder to work…I just give each of them that scenario and say, ‘Go out in the hall for five minutes and make this as fun and funny as you can and come back and do the skit for the rest of the class.’ And then we’ll have to guess what the interview problem is.
Direct Experience
Students often transition from conducting interviews with classmates and the instructor to interviewing members of the public. Educators can also orchestrate an event with invited speakers: “Anybody who comes to visit me, former roommate, former friend, current friend, former colleague, whatever it is, I always say, ‘Come during my class. We’re going to interview you (#9).’”
After the students gain experience interviewing, educators often requested that they create unpublished stories requiring them to include interviewed news sources: “They all have to do a sit-down interview with a newsmaker. This is usually in the 8- to 10-min range. This is a multi-camera studio situation (#8).”
Direct experience builds off role-playing, but it provides a much more authentic interviewing experience for students because it enables educators to see if students can navigate real-world interactions with news sources: One of the things is we throw them out to [location] after they’ve been in school for about an hour…In [location], there’s a lot of people walking around, trying to give you to give them money, and going out and talking to them about what is it like to be there, maybe talking to some tourists too. (#4)
Reinforcement
Feedback often is provided to students through critique, the instructor through edits, or individuals through a process of self-reflection assessing the success of their own performance. Through the trial and error of simulation and direct experience, the behaviors students demonstrated during these interviewing scenarios should, according to Bandura and Walters (1963), then be reinforced by either positive or negative feedback from their peers or the instructor.
Reinforcement typically comes in the form of feedback, either on recorded interviews, lists of questions students have prepared, or on the stories that include source interviews. They have to do long interviews and then have to transcribe a chunk of them, and I make comments on their transcripts. And I also listen to them. So they get feedback in that way. That makes an enormous amount of difference because it’s personalized feedback. (#5) There are oftentimes when I will save raw interviews and play them in class and have the students pick the most clear, complete, concise, pertinent, powerful, passionate clip that adds authority, credibility, impact, and dimension. (#9) Well, nothing says success or failure in interview like when you’re sitting in an edit room and you’re scouring through the raw tape to find the great sound bites. That’s the proof of a successful interview or not a successful interview. In that moment where there is going back and forth in Avid or Final Cut Pro and shuttling through…that moment where they realize, “I don’t have much here.” Or, “I’ve got a lot of boring information or stuff.” (#4)
In the context of interviewing, reinforcement stimuli can derive from a number of sources. In addition to feedback, during the interview itself, the students’ interviewing behaviors can be reinforced by their own interactions with sources. For example, Educator #9 discussed an exercise in testing how well her students listened and asked follow-up questions during an interview. In a role-playing simulated interview on a benign topic in the classroom, she asked the source to casually slip in that “they killed somebody” to see whether the students would deviate from their list of prepared questions. In this instance, the completely off-topic admission of the source taught students a valuable lesson of listening. Broadcast Educator #9 continued to state that the admission often is overlooked, and students “didn’t pick up on it and just kept going” in their line of questioning.
Much like a stage performance where the evaluation of actors takes into consideration appearance, emotion, delivery, and movement on stage, broadcast educators often evaluate the performances of journalists during interviewing. Performance evaluation strategies involve critiques of how students deliver their questions, manage source interactions, and perform during live or recorded interviews. Broadcast Educator #5 reinforced the notion of performance because the students are being evaluated on the idioms of their speech such as their tendencies to fill pauses or responding to their sources with um, ahh, and even awesome, as well as being evaluated on the sound bites they acquired from their interviews. I have my students do recordings and then type up transcripts, which I then read and I sometimes listen to the recording. And then like many of them will have verbal tics, “Oh yeah, awesome, awesome, awesome, awesome” after everything the person says. And they don’t get it at first that you don’t want to be sort of making a judgment about what the person is telling you because: (A) you might be influencing their answers somewhat and (B) if they’re telling you something that maybe isn’t going to make them look so good when you actually write the story, and then you write the story and quote them on that thing; you sort of misled them about the exchange. (#5) I actually show clips from them. In many cases, there are the things like, “Why didn’t you follow up here at all?” “Or you aren’t paying any attention. You’re like looking over out the window basically and not paying any attention.” Sometimes, there is a great follow-up. (#5)
Challenges to Teaching Interviewing
Research Question 2 queried the challenges journalism educators face while teaching interviewing to students. It is important to mention obstacles in order to help other educators develop materials to address these issues. Educators expressed that the main challenges were students’ social anxiety, students’ confidence levels, and classroom time constraints.
We found that almost all educators taught only one or two interviewing lectures in entry-level news reporting courses. Respondent #6 expressed a desire for more time to engage students on a deeper level over the course of a semester: More time with each student on critiquing how they do. I’d love to spend more time. What I’d like to be able to do is have them bring all their raw interviews and play them in class and say, “Okay, here’s how I might build the story.” (#6) There’s a real aversion I think especially among a lot of young people who want to be reporters. It’s easier to get things off the web, and there’s been less of an emphasis on shoe leather and actual experience reporting, so we try to break that habit right away. (#4) One of the things I have noticed with students over the last few years is that they all seemed very reluctant to go out and meet people. They want to do interviews over text message, over email, and I find it’s one of the hardest challenges. (#6) There has been an increasing tendency for them to rely on electronic communication…They really prefer to try to interview people by email, for example. And I’m really trying to push for them to do in-person interviews…. It’s like they’ll go talk to someone for a minute or two so that they can draw up a quote into the story. And then I try to push back and say, ‘Give me some context. Why did this person say that?’ In very recent years, I’ve had to push much harder for them to do in-person interviews. (#3)
Additionally, educators discussed an apprehension to follow up or clarify information with a news source after they have conducted the interview. Aspiring journalists often experienced self-confidence issues when speaking to people in positions of authority or out of fear of appearing incompetent to the news source. I never hesitate to tell the reporter, “Hey can you call that person back and get more. That’s a really a good point they made, but I’d like to learn more about them, please call them back.” A lot of young journalists, they’ll feel a little skittish about maybe calling a source back because they think they will feel stupid or so forth. I actually think that source will appreciate it when you call them back to verify information or to ask a follow-up question because it shows me that you care, you’re being careful, and that you want to get it right. So I don’t hesitate to ask reporters. More often than not, it’s younger less experienced reporters, that do not call back and ask follow-up questions. (#7) Part of it that makes it difficult in the television world, in particular, is there’s all this equipment. And so even if you get a perfect situation where you get to set up in a conference room and your interview subject doesn’t even come in until you are ready, it’s still…“Excuse me, I’ve got to put a microphone on you. Could you please sit this way? Please don’t rock in your chair.” You have to be the director. All this kind of technical issues have to be solved before you get down to any kind of substantive question back and forth. (#8) I ask them to select a demographic group with which they are not very familiar whether it is by race or by religion or by sexual orientation or age or political persuasion. And so they need to find someone in the community who represents that demographic, and do a seven-minute live- to-tape interview with that person…The interview focuses on how the news covers that demographic group, what kind of discrimination that group has had. So it’s great personal experience for them to get out of their comfort zone. And be a little bit scared and meet somebody that’s different from them and then they find out, “Oh my goodness that person really isn’t that different than I am.” (#10) I have a good assignment. It used to be the first assignment of the semester. You got to go out to a business and take a picture of it…write about the business…I would normally get back weak quotes so the interview didn’t go too well, and pictures with nobody in the picture. (#11)
Broadcast Journalism Pedagogy
And while many of these teaching approaches are fluid across print and broadcast journalism, there are additional differences in teaching interviewing across mediums. Research Question 3 sought to help teachers better understand how to teach interviewing when recording equipment is present in the interview because broadcast educators stated that broadcast journalism instructors must factor in the technical aspects when teaching interviewing. Thus, broadcast instructors often simulate interviews with video camera equipment present so that students learn how to navigate the operation of audio and video equipment during such situations. You’ve got a producer in your ear so you have to hear him or her then you’ve got the source and you’re doing it on live television. (#9) We do mock news conferences where the students are there “one-man-banding” it with all the equipment. And they’re trying to ask questions and listen, and they have a speaker. That’s their first introduction into what it’s like with all the pressure of having to deal with the technical parts of being a broadcaster. (#1) I guess there’s also the physical idea of interviewing with the camera. They need to be standing somewhere so don’t they get a profile shot…one exercise where they stand a certain way. I have somebody in back pretending to hold a camera, someone’s in front where they hold the mic. (#1) But when you’re holding a mic, you’re out in the field, a lot of people who are not veterans at being interviewed can be intimidated by that. So it’s good to break the ice with something simple. (#6) I have critiqued students in this exercise that I told you about how agreeing with everything that the person said and showing bias or an opinion or a preference. And I don’t think that’s the role of the journalist. Facial expressions or nod of the head may be empathetic, and I certainly think warm up the person, but I don’t think a journalist should side with that person. And particularly for broadcast, you have to be really careful about not saying mm-hmm, mm-hmm, mm-hmm because that’s on tape, and it cuts up your sound bite. It’s hard to work around that or edit that out. (#10)
Conclusion
The role of journalists as sense-makers is still fundamental to the information gathering process. It remains easier and more efficient for one or a small group of individuals—the reporters in the field—to gain access to policy makers, officials, and eyewitnesses to provide necessary context to complicated events and issues by conducting interviews with sources (Harcup, 2015). Until this study, pedagogical research on how educators teach journalistic interviewing competencies had not been conducted despite the importance of interviewing to the news-gathering process.
The results revealed that a variety of pedagogical approaches (i.e., observation, simulation, direct experience, and reinforcement) are used by journalism educators to teach interviewing to students. Based on the literature review, however, the application of all four approaches may result in deeper learning. In multimodal delivery, no one approach to teaching interviewing is taken, suggesting that a range of scaffolding techniques is necessary for students to grasp and master journalistic interviewing. Multimodal refers to an approach in which students retain and master complex ideas at higher levels when they are exposed to those ideas in multiple ways (Moreno & Mayer, 2007). Multimodal approaches combine several individual approaches, such as observation and role-playing, in order to effectively teach the complexity of interviewing competencies. The University of Washington School of Medicine, for example, employed a multimodal approach by providing opportunities for role-playing through recorded interviews between students and simulated patients. Students then observed and critique the role-played interviews (Taylor & Berren, 1974). Rowles and Russo (2013) suggested that role-playing and observation are interrelated and, when combined, are more effective in teaching interviewing.
However, we did not test the effectiveness of these pedagogical approaches. We encourage future research to determine how educators evaluate the effectiveness of their teaching strategies, and experiments are needed to test whether these strategies result in positive outcomes in a range of contexts. Additional research is needed in assessing the validity of these categories found in this study because we relied on a small sample of educators to identify pedagogical concepts employed by educators. This study does provide a limited baseline understanding of how interviewing is taught in contemporary settings. More recent textbooks address issues associated with interviewing sources via social media and email platforms, which may be resulting in communication apprehension issues in the classroom because the findings reveal that educators perceive that students are resistant to speak directly with news sources, which means that news sources may be less forthright during an interview. Future research should more closely examine this phenomenon and its impact on journalism. Additionally, class exercises should encourage students to include diverse sources in their stories and discuss the importance of it (Halpern-Wenger & Potter, 2019; Harrower, 2013). Research could examine how that practice is being taught at universities to determine what roles universities play in ensuring that stories are representative and accurate. Even if the proportion of training devoted to the development of interviewing skills in programs is minimal at university programs, students’ future exposure to interviewing will be substantial. And this is why we need more research on how journalistic interviewing is being taught.
Footnotes
Acknowledgments
We would like to thank the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication’s Newspaper and Online Division to thank for funding this project.
Declaration of Conflicting Interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest with respect to the research, authorship, and/or publication of this article.
Funding
The authors disclosed receipt of the following financial support for the research and/or authorship of this article: This study received funding from Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC)’s Newspaper and Online Division.
