School progresses along at a steady clip. I am never without things to do, just without interest in doing the things I should. It's hard to find motivation sometimes, especially when I know that I have more time another day to do it(although on that day I'm going to want to do it just as little as I did the day before).
I am certainly learning a lot, about interviewing, radio stories, tv stories, writing, researching, and, of course the laws which I must follow as a journalist. Most of these are through practical application, for example, last week I produced a radio story. This week with two partners I am producing a TV story. However, interviewing is a whole new thing.
Tonight I interviewed a political candidate for an assignment. We did research on our candidate and chose a topic for our interview. But no matter how much I prepared, there's no way that I could have been ready for the challenges of my first interview(it was to be in the format of a live radio interview, and to be about 7 minutes long).
I failed to do some key things that I had been told in class, but didn't think would be a problem. Ie, the political candidate's campaign manager was in the room with us. I should have told the manager that the interview was to only include myself and my interviewee, thus the manager should not speak because his voice would be in my audio. He did talk, although very occassionally. I did not feel in control of my interview though. Part of that was just about how nervous I was, but also the manager being there, and I let my candidate hold the mic when he was answering questions. I should have held onto it. By letting him hold the mic, I was surrendering some of my power, and although I'm not sure that he felt that way, I sure did.
Anyways. Interviewing people for a print assignment, or even for a tv or radio story, is just completely different from this. You need to be able to think on your toes, clearly ask a question and be able to get a clear and concise response, and in an accountability interview, you need to cover all your bases. I definitely feel that this interview was one of the hardest things I've done yet. It's so spontaneous, uncontrolled, and just crazy. Essentially, all aspects are up to you, and you need to exert complete control over the situation. This is obviously something that I need to work on.
I will not do well on this assignment. But I am learning and have room to improve. I need to be ok with that.
