How do I get "good" at asking questions?

Mr. Ragu makes a great point. Often the interview subject will lead you to the best stuff if you let him/her.

Listen to the *way* someone answers questions. Does he sigh? Is there a slight pause, the kind where someone is weighing whether to get something off his chest? Does he rattle off a rehearsed answer? Does he come back to something a second time? Does he answer a different question than you asked? Sometimes people are dying to talk about something, they just need to be prompted. Be attentive to the cues and follow them. (This advice applies to one-on-ones; a press conference, as noted earlier, is a totally different beast)

It's painful to do, but I've found one of the most useful exercises is to go back and listen to your interviews. Not while transcribing or on deadline - just listen. Freed from the interviewing situation - the need to write down each quote, or prepare your next question, or worry about how much time you have left - you can really hear yourself. That means you hear the spot where you were so busy preparing your eloquent follow-up that you missed an important opportunity, or the spot where you had a real good flow but felt you needed to change the subject (worst thing you can do). Listen to the tone of the answers and you can hear when someone's engaged. Then learn from it.

Two other useful pieces of advice I got when starting out: First, be the dumbest guy in the room. It may be an ego-sapper to keep asking someone to explain something to you, but it leads to the best quotes. Because the first time they answer, it's probably a prepared answer. If you say, "Sorry, I still don't understand. Can you take me through that again?" then they have to come up with another way to explain it. Maybe that leads to a great metaphor, or insight. Also, forcing someone to take their answer to a more fundamental level - lose the jargon and really explain what the hell is going on - is exactly what you're trying to do for your readers. Get a subject to do it and you cut out the middleman.

Second: your best stuff always comes at the end, when the interview's done. Turn off the tape recorder (I know one writer who even makes a grand show of this, to provide the sense of "okay, now that business is over"), finish up, thank the interview subject, then "remember" a few extra things you wanted to ask. This is when the rapport is at its peak, and often the subject feels the loosest. There's gold to be had.

 

Also, if you can find a player who consistently makes similar or the same observations about the game that you do, keep going to him or her.

When I covered D.C. United during their 1999 MLS Cup season, I found over the course of the season that goalkeeper Tom Presthus consistently made some of the same observations I did about the matches. I'd think something but wouldn't be able to say it, but then he'd say what I was thinking. All of a sudden, I could quote someone rather than editorialize.

 

SMSU,

Experience is key. Not just experience in terms of asking a lot of questions, but experience with particular interview subjects.

There are some coaches and players who will give you the best stuff if you ask a simple short question and get out of the way. Others need you to give a long lead in, almost to prove that you know something. Some guys give their best answers when you ask them X & O's questions. You will need to catch some guys as quickly as possible after the game when they still have the adrenaline running through them and other guys need to cool off or else they will give you three word answers because their mind is somewhere else. Some will open up right away and you'll need to BS off the record with others because they need to feel like they trust you.

You won't learn any of that unless you spend time interviewing them. So you need to take every opportunity to do interviews, not just to try out different approaches for your sake, but to figure out what approach works best for a particular person that you interview.

(And ChiB is dead on with being willing to be the dumbest guy in the room.)

 

GBNF hit it on the head. Acting like it is a conversation is an easy way to put people at ease and get more information out of them.

I have stumbled upon some great nuggets just from BSing with high school or college kids - like the time I found out a kid who qualified for the state track meet in the hurdles, despite practicing all season with one hurdle. His school didn't have a track, it was in the middle of nowhere and he just practiced jumping over the one hurdle over and over.

If I would have asked him three or four questions and called it good, I wouldn't have gotten that information.

Putting kids at ease is the easiest way to get really good information. I'm not sure exactly how to do that, but I have always had success in that aspect. I'm not sure if it is because I look young or because I joke with them or what, but the idea of it being a conversation is a great skill to learn.

 

The Pope is giving the PhD course right there.

 

Here's a good question for the toolbox:

What made the difference in the game today?

 

Or you could do what I saw 3 guys do a year or two ago at a prep game.

Local radio station is covering the game, coach comes back out to do a post-game radio interview. Writers walk over and whip out their tape recorders and do not do a follow-up later.

 

Don't know if you are covering any high school games but it is always good if you can to listen to the coaches post-game speech. A lot of coaches tell the players exactly how they are feeling about the way the game was played. Now I never use what is said in a post-game speech. But if I hear something interesting, I can always ask the coach a leading question about what I heard during the speech. Also, sometimes a coach will let you use a good quote from one of these post-game speeches. Some of the quotes are actually pretty telling.

I think I saw earlier someone said make it like a conversation. If you can get a coach talking about the game you sometimes will be surprised what comes out. Sometimes I'm just listening and thinking the next question and don't hear all that is said. Then I get back to the office and listen the digital recorder and find some golden quotes.