Pro-Con Interview Techniques
Face-to-face
Pro: Able to grab emotion and tone for story
Con: Difficult to take notes on little details
Email:
Pro: Good for follow up questions, helps to cover the details
Con: Difficult to sense emotion or tone
Text:
Pro: Good for quick questions
Con: Difficult to get any type of detailed answer
I used email to ask Riva follow up questions after our original face-to-face interview. Some of these questions included:
1. What did you do at the “beach” you ended up at?
2. What did you see online that made you realize the danger in the situation?
3. Where (location) did you go to high school?
4. How old were you when you went to Israel?
I contacted my alternate primary source through text since I was unable to get her email. This made the questions difficult to ask, because I felt as though writing too much would make it hard to understand what I was asking. It also limited how detailed the answers were.
Style Changes
- Numerals: I had difficulty remembering when to use symbols and when to use words for numbers (2013 AP Stylebook Pg. 194)
- Attribution: I struggle a lot with attribution so I often looked it up.
(Rich Pg. 42) - Commas: I was worried I was overusing commas so I checked correct placement
(2013 AP Stylebook Pg. 305)
Writing Tool #10: Cut big, then small
Example in my text: I omitted needless words. I overused the word “and,” and I also got rid of the unnecessary details in my story
Writing Tool #11: Prefer the simple over the technical
Example in my text: “None of them had taken the trip before.”
Writing Tool #23: Tune your voice
Another person and I read my text allowed multiple times to make sure that the entire text read smoothly
Tips I Followed
Rich Pg. 154: “Stages Of The Writing Process”
When I was having difficulty structuring my story I looked at the stages of the writing process in the Rich textbook which helped to lead me in the right direction.
NewsU Lead Lab: I was having difficulty deciding which type of lead would be most appropriate for my article, after going through the tutorial on the NewsU Lead Lab again I was quickly able to write my lead.
Links
I went to an outside credible source to research any US government warnings against traveling to Israel during the time period that Riva was there. I found this link:
http://travel.state.gov/travel/cis_pa_tw/tw/tw_5511.html
Graphic
Picture of Riva Bergel taken by Anna Brune
annamnbrune 