How You Can Leverage Interview Transcription As a Journalist

In the journalism profession, nothing beats a good and accurate story. Journalists are expected to act in the best interests of the public by providing insightful, educational, investigative, and entertaining content. As a journalist, you need to get your subjects to divulge important information that your audience will want to know.

Preparing well for an interview will enable you to get a good story. However, it is easy to miss valuable information from your subjects during the interview. This is why it helps to research your questions in advance and have an excellent recorder.

Read on to find out how you can leverage transcription to get accurate information from your subjects that will be interesting to your audience.

Pre-Plan for the Interview

When it comes to getting great interviews, planning is everything. You should plan well to make the most of the time you will have with the subject. Pre-planning involves researching a particular subject and the topic of discussion.

Carry out background research on the subject and topic of discussion to come up with intelligent questions to ask. Keep your core objective in mind when coming up with questions for the subject. Remember, you want to get information that will be important for your audience rather than that which won’t provide any additional value.

Record the Subject Verbatim

Recording your subject’s answers for later conversion to a printed interview transcription is important to capturing clear responses to your questions. When you have a recorded version of the interview, you will not miss any important information that may have been divulged. Moreover, you will have ample time to evaluate your subject’s responses to set the agenda of the story.

Professional journalism does not condone intentional errors. When you have a short time to submit a story, you can hire a transcription service company to transcribe your interview recording. A professional transcription firm will produce error-free transcripts of the interview, allowing you to quickly find information in the interview that would be beneficial for your audience.

Be Flexible

The art of being a good journalist is not only researching your interview questions in advance but also knowing when to deviate from the script to gather more useful information. Sometimes, during an interview, the subject may introduce new information that you were not aware of but could be significant to the story.

You should be flexible to come up with relevant questions that will allow you to get more information based on what has already been introduced. This means having a keen listening ear, the ability to connect information fast, critical analytic skills, and being flexible to come up with solid questions that would make your interview more meaningful. Sometimes, you may have to go against the script to get quality information.

Journalism is all about giving your audience well-researched, accurate, and valuable information that is of interest to them. Recording your interviews and later transcribing them will allow you to get accurate information to your audience fast.

The above is an overview of how you can leverage Transcription services for your journalism career.

Read Also: My Success Story As a Transcriptionist