The art of interviewing

“A day rarely goes by without me making at least one interview.”

With a cup a coffee in her hand and the weekend’s printed newspaper lying on her desk, I meet journalism student, Ida. Doing 1-10 interviews every day she is used to being the one asking the questions, but not today.

Today she is the one with all the answers.

It’s not exactly easy for me to smell the newly brewed coffee and the hardly dry ink from the newspaper, because while I’m at my webcam in Munich, Ida is situated in Denmark, more specifically in Aarhus, Jutland. Currently Ida is doing her 18 months internship at one of the biggest newspapers in Denmark, Jyllandsposten, which could be translated into something like The Post of Jutland.

Ida has been at the culture desk, a more Aarhus-specific desk and at the moment she is writing for the domestic desk – quite interesting with the parliamentary election coming up, according to Ida herself who has always been very interested in politics and societal conditions. But what really is the most interesting about working as a journalist?

“It’s a huge cliché and 9 out of 10 journalists would answer the same. But to tell stories every day. To get the chance to create, select, angle and play with the dissemination of the stories that meet the Danes. And when my articles are at their best, they can be agenda setting and quoted in other media. This is not an everyday thing, but sometimes we get feedback from readers who have been affected by a story. That always means something special to me.”

Working on the culture desk, Ida has interviewed some prominent people. She has been in Iceland to interview one of Denmark’s most popular sing and songwriters and she was invited to Sorrento, Italy, to attend an official press conference for a new musical. Still, one interview stands out. Maybe you know him from his role as the bad guy in Casino Royal, the first James Bond movie starring Daniel Craig, or maybe you know him as the cannibal Hannibal? His name is Mads Mikkelsen and he is one of the most prominent Danish actors. “The whole press set up around Mads Mikkelsen and a time frame of only 30 minutes for an interview with such a great actor. There was no room for poor questions or half answers.”

“I was afraid to miss something essential.”

Ahead of the interview with Mads Mikkelsen, Ida felt nervous, but instead of the nervousness being a hindrance she turned it to her own advantage. “In the interview with Mads Mikkelsen, I actively used my nervousness and “played with it” to make the interview a little more informal. He also expressed that we thus came to talk about some more offhand things than he had reeled off to the experienced film journalists all day.”

So even with the fear of missing out on something essential and an inherent nervousness, Ida managed to make an interview she was quite proud of, but what really does make a good interview in her opinion, I wonder. She starts off by explaining that the common opinion among journalists prescribes that a good interview should reveal just a little more than you expected it to. “Otherwise a good interview is the happy medium between what the journalist has planned and the spontaneous or unpredictable that arises when meeting.” Expecting or hoping for the unknown – something you can not prepare yourself for – seems nerve-racking to me and proofs that interviewing is not just something you learn over night. It takes time and lots of practicing to master the art of interviewing.