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CCJ Books

The Elements of Journalism: What Newspeople Should Know and the Public Should Expect

Completely updated and revised
"The most important book on the relationship of journalism and democracy published in the last fifty years." – Roy Peter Clark, The Poynter Institute
We Interrupt This Newscast: How to Improve Local News and Win Ratings, Too

Just Released
A landmark study on what people watch and why. The most exhaustive study ever of local TV news - what helps ratings, what drives viewers away, and what editorial approaches and story-telling techniques most influence viewership.

Links of the Week



Global Investigative Journalism Conference
Highlights from the 2007 GIJC annual conference

EXTRA! EXTRA!
IRE's guide to some of journalism's best recent investigative work

How Do You Feel?

John Brady, Author - "The Craft of Interviewing", August 12, 1977

In his fine collection of TV writing, Living-Room War, Michael J. Arlen elaborates on the Proliferation and uselessness of the "how do you feel" school of broadcast interviewing:

"I mean, the 'how-do-you-feel' stuff would be okay if it led anywhere, if it were something people could respond to ... but in a professional interview what it really amounts to is a sort of marking time while the reporter thinks up some real questions, ,or maybe while he hopes that this one time the Personage will actually include a bit of genuine information in his inevitably mechanical reply, which the reporter can then happily pursue."

Arlen maintains, and rightly I think, that "How do you feel?" is either ridiculous - "Well, Archduke, how does it feel to have been shot three times in the thigh and shoulder?" - or unanswerable except for occasional mumbles and vapidity:

"Or, to put it another way, if time is running short, and you have cornered the man who has just thrown the convention over to Oscar W. Underwood as a result of having brought up 117 votes from the State of New Jersey during teatime, "How do you feel?" or "What's your reaction?" might be fairly far down toward the bottom of a list of the 37 most useful questions you might ask him at that point. In these circumstances what in hell is anybody going to say except "Well, Buzz, I feet real good."

 

CCJ has collected some of journalism's best ideas, strategies and techniques to help journalists and citizens alike.