I’m a journalism student. One of the things that my teachers have been drilling into my head is “be prepared.” Bring extra batteries, and use a notepad as well as a tape recorder during interviews just in case something goes wrong. I have since given up on the second piece of advice–As far as getting exact quotes, I can’t write fast enough, and I can do as well from memory as by looking at my notes. So I do rely on a tape recorder during interviews.
(You can probably see where this is going)
Saturday, I did an interview for a story I’m writing for class. I just went back to my tape to try and find a quote and–nothing. Fastforward a bit more–nothing. Go back to the beginning of the tape, silence, ten seconds of speech (and from the middle, not the beginning), and nothing again. So, for that half hour I was in the coffee shop talking to this woman, I have ten seconds of tape.
Fuck!
Granted, this is just for class, so I’m not so worried about misquoting, and I do remember enough to get a close approximation of what she said, if not the exact wording, but it’s always nice to have the tape to go back to.
I wonder if my luck with this recorder working has finally run out…
Eh, you can get a replacement tape recorder for your purposes for about $20US. I have one that I use as a backup in case my “good” one fails, or I do something stupid. It’s hysterical. I go to interviews with two tape players and a notebook.
Just write the article the best you can with paraphrasing immediately, and call up your interviewee, crawl on broken glass to apologize and explain, and get some fresh quotes.
I’ll try. But I have a horrible tendency to procrastinate, plus I don’t actually have her number. If I can get to her in time, I will.
It’s not a big deal, if this was a newspaper story I would be more worried about it. I know she won’t read this. Hell (and I’m not saying it’s right, but I know it’s happened), people have made up interviews and quotes for this class. This will be the closest I’ve ever come to doing that.
I did have to do something similar once before, when my recorder didn’t record (I tried to use that as an excuse to buy a new one, but then found out the pause was on :smack: ), but given the length of this assignment, I can’t really get through it without using some direct quotes. At worst, they’ll be reworded–I can remember what she said, just not how exactly she said it.
If it turns out that my recorder finally conked out on me (I’ve had bad luck with this brand of electronics–the recorder I have now is a replacement for another that didn’t work) I’ll be quite annoyed though. It picks up well. Last year, me and a friend were both covering the same story. Her tape was hard to make out because of background noise–mine was fine unless people were screaming in the background.
Learn shorthand or make up your own system because you’ll never survive in a real newsroom if you rely on a recorder. Many people clam up when you have a tape recorder. It’s too easy to get lazy and only half pay attention to what is said if you think you can just go back to the tape. You’ll waste far more time searching a tape while you’re on deadline than if you took good notes. In my experience, only cub reporters rely on tape. Their either learn to take good notes or fail.
I really don’t disagree with your statement. The purity of a direct quote is beyond dispute.
But I have to mention that I’ve seen and read so much jounalist output that is just plain factually wrong that quoting somebody from recall may not be all that misleading.
I know a number of journalists who won’t use tape recorders for various reasons. I’ve used them for long interviews so I waffle a bit, but even when you use them you have to do both. Write down the themes and transcribe the really important quotes. Sifting through large portions of tape without notes to guide you is an enormous pain.
As far as shorthand, I never learned a formal system but was told “Just leave out the vowels.” That’s served me okay.
We’ve been told it might be a good idea to learn shorthand, but no pointers on what style to use (not even a 'just leave out the vowels). It’s starting to look like a really good idea right about now–and if nothing else, it’ll be a neat skill to have. Does anybody have any suggestions on a good system to learn, and some resources? I see there’s quite a few styles out there, and I don’t have a clue where to start.
Story is done, I e-mailed her my number and if she calls me back in time to get some more quotes out of her, well, then I’m pretty lucky. I’ll probably use my note pad next time just because now I’m suspicious of my recorder, though this was my last assignment of the semester, so hopefully I’ll have had time to learn some shorthand by then.
[QUOTE=Jayn_Newell]
We’ve been told it might be a good idea to learn shorthand, but no pointers on what style to use (not even a 'just leave out the vowels). It’s starting to look like a really good idea right about now–and if nothing else, it’ll be a neat skill to have. Does anybody have any suggestions on a good system to learn, and some resources? I see there’s quite a few styles out there, and I don’t have a clue where to start.
[QUOTE]
Fellow journalism student here.
I’m learning T-Line shorthand. It’s quite hard but I’m getting there. You could always get the “T-Line Gold Coursebook” and try and teach yourself.
The other way to do it is just practice. A class assignment is the ideal place. It’s not really hard to remind yourself not to write the vowels and you get faster as you do it more often.
Short hand like T-Line is a lot faster then just leaving out the vowels. Each letter has a symbol (which is quicker to write then the normal letter), vowels are left out, popular words like ‘the’ and ‘and’ just have one symbol, and there are also symbols for popular world endings like ‘ing’.
With T-Line you can do speeds that are just not possible if you are only leaving out the vowles.
I’m surprised you are allowed to use tape. In my days in j-school it was actively discouraged. You really shouldn’t need one for your typical daily deadline sort of stuff anyway.
This stuff does become more useful if it’s a longer interview as opposed to getting a comment from a press rep or something. I’m just finishing a piece where I had to interview 5 musicians for about 50 minutes each, plus plenty of hanging around. I took plenty of notes, but for a few minutes now and then I could take it easy and rely on the recorder, and it made life a lot easier.
That sounds very useful. ‘Why did the journalism school that may be the best in the US not teach me this?’ one might ask. Rather loudly. :rolleyes:
At my university it’s not part of the course either. I had to pay extra for it. It used to be part of the course, but people kept failing. It was making the uni look bad so they took it out. :rolleyes:
Not getting her business card was your second mistake. I have a somewhat impressive collection of business cards from people I’ve interviewed. Not only do I have their number in case I have a question, but I’ve got sources for future stories.
sighs Live and learn. Besides, isn’t that the point of going to university–make the mistakes now so you’ll know better when it matters? Actually, last year I always got the person’s phone number. This is only the second interview I’ve done since last April, and it slipped my mind this time.
You know, I don’t think my university offers a shorthand course at all. But it is a pretty small school.
I had a similar experience – I take extremely fast notes on a laptop during interviews, but the one time my trusty Model 100 dumped the file containing all my notes and I couldn’t restore it, no way nohow.
So I write the interview as best I could from memory, then sent a draft to my source and asked if they wanted to change or correct anything before it went to print – a courtesy on my part. He happily changed this and punched up that and thought I had done him a swell favor. I know you’re not SPOZED to do that, but it’s better than making stuff up.
My journalism school didn’t teach me shorthand either, though I’ve used my own system for…I don’t know how long. My system is a combination of dropping vowels, making symbols for frequent words (“the”), endings ("-ings"), and connectors (“to,” “from”). I couldn’t image getting out of college, let alone a journalism degree, without it.
Sure thing. But that means you need to make this mistake and not try to weasel out of it by making up a quote. Even if you think you remember or think it’s kind of close. That kind of thing is too easy to do, too easy to make excuses for yourself. But no matter how you dress it up, it’s unacceptable.