When writing a news story you might get a chance to interview an important person for your news article. Interviews are a great way to add insight into the topic that you are writing about or give the article a personal touch. However, an interview cannot be properly used by the writer if they did not take good notes during the interview. Notes that are taken during the interview are important to the writer because it allows them to have what was exactly said by the interviewee and allows the writer to present accurate facts and quotes.
Here are some tips that will help you take good notes while conducting an interview for a news article.
Learn Short Hand. Try to learn some type of short hand before the interview. You will want to be taking notes while the person is speaking but you will not have the time to write everything out in long hand. Short hand gives you a chance to capture everything without having to write it out by hand.
Write Small. The smaller that you write the more you can fit into one notebook page. Turning the pages of a notebook can take up time and allow you to miss out on important parts of the interview.
Always Ask for Clarification. If you missed something while taking a note ask the interviewee to repeat the answer. A great way to do this is to fault yourself and remind them that you want to accurately quote them in the article.
Ask Technical Questions to Stall. If you are still writing out notes you can always ask a technical question that you know the answer to so that you have time to finish your notes up.
