When I run the Articulate Seminar for companies* one of the messages that I try to bang home is the need to ‘report it out’ when writing for business. Journalists do it and so should corporate writers.

This means actually talking to people. It means getting on the phone or meeting face to face. An email exchange or some frankenquote doesn’t work. As Robert Scoble has discovered (see: ‘Great journalists call‘), this is what good journalists do.

(I would add that great companies answer! See: How to build a good relationship with the media.)

Interviews help in so many ways:

• People believe people like them not PRs
• Get some personality and flavour for the story
• Make a dull story more human
• Get good, real quotes to punctuate the story
• Checks facts and opinions
• Discovers tensions and differences of view
• Allows you to understand what is important for the reader

Interviewing is a skill that can be learned. There are lots of techniques and tactics. For example, I find that taking lots of notes helps me to stay quiet and let the interviewee speak. But if you don’t speak to someone in the first place, you’ve lost the race before it began.

My guru, Donald Murray has a lot of advice about interviewing. I recommend his book “Writing to Deadline.” See my review.

* Can’t resist a slight plug / public service announcement. I occasionally run free open access Articulate seminars at Microsoft London. Let me know if you’d like to come to one. I’m fixing up dates for three more later this year. Also, if you want me to run a private seminar at your company - most recently I did this for HP - I would be happy to talk about that too.