Exploring the Interview Format

When finals are approaching I tend to find new (and increasingly elaborate) ways of procrastinating my studying. Last term this took the form of old Jian Ghomeshi interviews with musicians: Jason Mraz, John Mayer, and many more. I was incredibly impressed! Jian Ghomeshi is able to distill out what makes each artist unique, and cajole them into opening up about it. He treats them fairly, but isn’t afraid to call them out on contradictions. He does his research.

I was so impressed that I wanted to explore working in the interview format myself. I have a hypothesis that it can be just as valuable at the personal level as at the level of famous people. (Also, I’ve always thought that the idea of hyperlocal news was really interesting).

Here’s my proposed process:

Step 1: The Interviewee should spend 10 minutes answering some questions (stream of conscious answers are fine), and then send their answers to the Interviewer. Some example questions could be:

1. What are some things you created last year? (projects, writing, or even ideas you haven’t acted on yet but you thought were interesting)
2. What are some things you learned last year?
3. Who are some people you admire?
4. What are some movies/songs/books that you frequently quote?
5. What are some goals you have for next year?

Step 2: The Interviewer should write a 250 ish word intro, and prepare some questions to ask the Interviewee.

Step 3: The Interviewee and Interviewer should meet face to face and record a 30 minute interview.

That’s is. Anybody game?