saksi

I've been taking this free online course at News University, "The Interview," where I've gleaned valuable lessons in journalism--and in life. The instructor, Poynter's Chip Scanlan, has these to say about listening:

"A lot of times we beat ourselves,” says Pat Stith, investigative reporter for the Raleigh News and Observer. “We don’t listen. We don’t ask simple, direct, follow-up questions. We just talk, and we talk, and we talk. We forget why we’re there.”

Prepare your questions. Write them down. Train yourself to ask them as you wrote them. Don’t stumble. Ask a question and then stop. Don’t apologize for asking it. And don’t be afraid to ask the question again and again.

Using a tape recorder, as I have for the last 15 years, has taught me my most important lesson of interviewing: to shut up.

It was a painful learning experience, having to listen to myself stepping on people’s words, cutting them off just as they were getting enthusiastic or appeared about to make a revealing statement. There were far too many times I heard myself asking overly long and leading questions, instead of simply saying, “Why?” or “How did it happen?” or “When did all this begin?” or “What do you mean?” and then closing my mouth and letting people answer.

“Learning to listen has been the great lesson of my life,” David Ritz wrote in The Writer. “You can’t capture a subject or render someone lifelike, you can’t create a living voice, with all its unique twists and turns, without listening. Now there are those who listen while waiting breathlessly to break in. For years, that was me. But I’m talking about patient listening, deep-down listening, listening with the heart as well as the head, listening in a way that lets the person know that you care, that you want to hear what she has to say, that you’re enjoying the sound of her voice.”