Lockdown has given reporters some new interview techniques

It took me months to start feeling the full effects of the coronavirus pandemic and subsequent lockdown. I’m an introvert. I do better in small groups. I like quiet. If this were an online dating profile, I’d tell you I like walks in the park, early drinks at a bar, and curling up on the sofa with a good book. It’s not that I’ve enjoyed having to stay home and forego most fun activities – I, like everyone else, really could have done without the global pandemic, thank you very much. But I coped OK. My temperament meant I was relatively well equipped to deal with lockdown, and for that I was grateful.

Then came November. I don’t know what happened. Maybe it was the holiday approaching. Maybe I finally spent too many hours working at the same table in my little studio. I started feeling restless and exhausted at the same time. I lost interest in daily activities. For a few days, I couldn’t put a finger on my malaise. Then, it hit me: in the words of Justin Bieber and the song he released in October, I was “so loOoOoOonely”.

This was an itch that Zoom drinks wouldn’t scratch. I craved spontaneity and authenticity. I craved the kind of conversation you lose yourself in. I craved connection.

What ended up saving me is – dare I say it – a couple of deadlines I had to hit for our New York office’s culture department. I’ve been working on two long features lately, and both of them involved spending a good amount of time talking to people: authors, podcasters, investigators, and people who have experienced extraordinary things. Over the course of 10 days, I dipped in and out of Zoom sessions and plain old phone calls. Interviewing people has long been my favourite part of the job, but the exercise was even more enjoyable than usual. More profound, too.

Every interview is a balance between planned, researched questions and spontaneous follow-ups. This has never been truer in the era of Zoom: we’re all at the mercy of technical mix-ups and impromptu pet cameos. We’re all having to work together. This has created a feeling of proximity, of mutual understanding between interviewer and interviewee, that can be hard to replicate in traditional circumstances.

A notebook on the table, a pen in your hand, a recording device: all these are necessary tools of the trade, but they also serve as reminders of everyone’s respective roles. They can create a distance. The disruptiveness of our current circumstances has blurred those lines for the better. Interviews – in my experience, at least – have become more personal, more candid, perhaps more vulnerable for all involved. A new intimacy has emerged between interviewer and interviewee, no doubt spurred on by the fact that social interaction is a currency in itself these days.

I’ve never been more grateful for those interactions as I’ve been in the past few days. I’m choosing to view this new proximity as a positive upshot of a less than ideal situation. Out of everything we’ve experienced in 2020, this is what I hope to bring with me into the new year.

Yours,

Clémence Michallon

US culture writer