# Journalism and "chat" interviews **URL:** \ **Category:** In My Humble Opinion\ **Created:** [November 8, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317 "2011-11-08T21:20:27Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 5\ **Page:** 1
**Author:** ![Gary\_Robson](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/gary_robson/32/3448_2.png) [@Gary\_Robson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Gary_Robson)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 9:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317/1 "2011-11-08T21:20:27Z")
I’m working on a magazine article which requires a number of interviews. Since most of the people I’m interviewing are deaf or severely hard-of-hearing, I can’t do a typical phone interview, so I decided to do the interviews using Facebook chat. This brings up an interesting question of journalistic style and integrity. Even careful writers have a tendency to use chat abbreviations (e.g., BTW, OTOH, IIRC) and not worry much about punctuation when chatting online. When quoting them in the article, should you leave their text as-is, or write it out, correct typos, and re-punctuate it as you would for a phone interview? Examples (these are not actual text from the interviews): [ol] [li]Should “imo legislation is reqd” be turned into “In my opinion, legislation is required”?[/li][li]Should “i think so but im not sure” be transcribed as “I think so, but I’m not sure”?[/li][li]Should “The ada reqires equal axs!” become “The ADA requires equal access!”?[/li][/ol] My gut says that in all three examples, I should do cleanup as shown. What do you think? In case it affects your opinion, this is _not_ for a scholarly journal – it’s for a trade association magazine. ---
**Author:** ![Tom\_Scud](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/f08c70/32.png) [@Tom\_Scud](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tom_Scud)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 9:50pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317/2 "2011-11-08T21:50:08Z")
Absolutely clean it up, for the same reason you don’t keep the umm uhhs and repeated words in voice interviews. ---
**Author:** ![ZipperJJ](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/zipperjj/32/211_2.png) [@ZipperJJ](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/ZipperJJ)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 9:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317/3 "2011-11-08T21:52:53Z")
How about this…ASL doesn’t translate directly to English, word-for-word. But if you were interpreting and then writing out an interview you wouldn’t write what they literally signed (“I go sleep wake up refresh”) but the English translation. So IMHO I would correct what they say. I would also correct it for a non-ASL speaker. If they were speaking to you in English you wouldn’t type all the “uhs” or “uhms” or stutters or even mis-pronunciations would you? (I realize that’s slightly different) I have a BS in journalism and actually did some chat interviews when I was in college. Sadly, only for my own online publication. But IM was so new that I never brought it up with the professors as we always only did telephone or in-person interviews. ---
**Author:** ![Marley23](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/45deac/32.png) [@Marley23](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Marley23)\ **Post date:** [November 8, 2011, 9:58pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317/4 "2011-11-08T21:58:23Z")
Yes, treat it like a phone interview. Typing out the abbreviations expresses the intent of the interview subjects and it’s much more readable. ---
**Author:** ![azraiel](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/5f9b8f/32.png) [@azraiel](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/azraiel)\ **Post date:** [November 9, 2011, 2:17am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/journalism-and-chat-interviews/602317/5 "2011-11-09T02:17:41Z")
I think you should transcribe the interviews with cleanup. This is interesting to me, as I’m in the middle of a project considering the ethics of oral transcription from the perspective of the disciplines of anthropology, history, journalism, and political science. Transcribing your examples as a journalist or political scientist, cleanup is the appropriate course. Transcribing as an anthropologist, cleanup is completely inappropriate. Transcribing as a historian is dicey–there is more than one consideration. Since you’re transcribing as a journalist, I think your answer is clear. Clean it up and transcribe it as grammatically proper as you can.