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Advances in Technology is Making Student's Jobs easier, and it isn't a Good Thing
Published April 19, 2007 When an Indiana Daily Student reporter contacted Edyta Sitko, he said he would make time to interview her. But, when their schedules did not make meeting easy, the reporter sent her an e-mail with a list of 10 questions for her to fill out and e-mail back. “This was a matter involving the organization I was president of and what had happened was a pretty big deal in the community,” said Sitko. “I wondered to myself how someone could write an accurate story based off these 10 questions in an e-mail.”
Sitko, a former IU student and president of Out, GLBT’s student organization, says she found herself doing the reporter’s job. She answered the questions in long and detailed paragraph format, thinking to herself that she should not have to send the reporter something they could just copy and paste. Reporters have interviewed many others like Sitko in the same way using a list of e-mailed questions left for the source to write about, sometimes never physically meeting the reporter. For college students living in a time with many technological advances, journalism majors can suffer from something that seems at first glance to be a beneficial tool. Journalism students can write articles without ever leaving a computer, which some worry is causing laziness and a lack of social skills. “If you don’t do in-person interviews now when the consequences are minor, you will be behind when you get a job,” said Beth Moellers, IU journalism school’s director of communications. “You’ll be compared to those peers who pushed themselves through college and it might not make you look good.” Most journalism school faculty continually advise their students not to e-mail sources, but students argue that e-mail is quick and easy for the source to respond.
“I hear students in my journalism classes saying things like ‘I’m waiting for someone to Facebook their answers back to me’ to the teacher as an excuse for why the story isn’t done,” said journalism student Rachael Wise. “I really don’t think someone will take you seriously if you Facebook questions to them and the same goes with e-mail.” Wise says her teachers regard e-mail interviews as unprofessional, but students continue to e-mail their sources for quotes in her classes. “Your story is just better if you have at least a phone interview. It’s vivid and full of expression that you don’t hear in an e-mail,” said Wise. Even the IDS, a journalism school newspaper, is conducting some interviews via e-mail, like Sitko’s. However, Chris Freiberg, managing editor and director of new media for the IDS, agrees e-mail should not be used for most stories. He said, “We discourage the use of e-mail in our newsroom, but there are a few instances that we allow it.” Freiberg said that if a source does not want to be interviewed in-person, they respect that decision and send an e-mail instead. He has also realized the positive use of e-mail in conducting surveys or interviewing professors about research. However, he states that other than those instances, the IDS does not encourage the use of e-mail interviews.
For short answer questions, like meeting times and surveys, most journalists agree that an e-mail is OK. And, Freiberg explains that some top IU figures refuse in-person interviews because of schedule constraints. “President Herbert doesn’t talk to us directly,” said Freiberg. “We’re lucky if we get one in-person interview from him every semester, so when we want his comments on an issue, there is just no other way.” Freiberg also says that e-mail is more accurate, but that many sources censor themselves in an e-mail in order to phrase an answer in a way that is beneficial to them. “There’s no question about it when it comes to investigative journalism, at least use the phone,” said Freiberg.
Some students complain that there is not enough time to get in touch with the source and have an interview. Wise says she has noticed in her classes that normally her peers cannot get in-person interviews because they are “lazy and don’t get in contact with the sources early enough.” Other students feel too shy to conduct in-person interviews with their sources. They send e-mails so they do not have the uncomfortable feeling of talking to experts, but can still have their comments. “Some of the best journalism students are shy,” said Moellers. “They get over the uncomfortable feeling often times by forcing themselves. You just have to think about the worst case scenario and put it into perspective by saying what’s the worst that could happen?” “You have to keep interviewing to become better, just like anything else,” said Wise. “If you want to be a journalist, you have to get over being shy because the job really is meeting and talking to people.” While students struggle with whether they should e-mail sources or not, Herald Times Editor-in-Chief, Bob Zaltsberg says, “E-mail interviews are a mixed bag.” Zaltsberg highlights the positives of using e-mail in the way that the reporter gets the opportunity to ask a very specific question, the source can give a more thought-out response and it provides a record of what was said. Zaltsberg is negative toward e-mail interviews because they do not allow for follow-up questions and nonverbal expression to be a part of the article. He says, “E-mail definitely limits you to how well you can tell a story because you won’t have the observations and color that makes for an interesting article.”
Both Zaltsberg and Moellers notice when an article is written using e-mail interviews. They do not only notice this is student papers, but even national ones like The New York Times. “If you look at a long story with long and complex quotes, it’s an indicator of e-mail interviews,” said Zaltsberg. “People just don’t talk like they write.” Zaltsberg warns that e-mail can become a crutch for journalists. He says that it is harder to ask difficult questions face-to-face, but that it must be done. When reporters use e-mail interviews at The Herald Times, they are often asked by their editors why they did not push further. Zaltsberg adds that it limits how much information the editor has to work with. At The Herald Times, reporters write in their article if the source was given an e-mail interview, so it is clear to the reader how the reporter obtained the information. Zaltsberg says that this is stressed in his newsroom and no story that was obtained through e-mail goes without the article saying so. |
