I’m extremely lucky to be doing what I am doing. I never thought that my blog would open up so many doors for me. I started it primarily to be a platform to get my name known so that I could eventually get some of my fiction published. That was the original goal for this blog.
Recently, I’ve been fortunate enough to interview some pretty amazing individuals. That started off innocently enough as well. My friend, Gamma Krush, is a DJ for DOPEfm, a radio show on 93.3 CFMU that broadcasts from McMaster University in Hamilton, Ontario each and every Saturday night. I’d been listening to the show and was a fan long before I became a member of the production team.
I didn’t know at the time how involved I’d become with the show. Gamma Krush simply asked me to help him conduct an interview one day. He had done one himself the month before and wasn’t really happy with how it had turned out. Since I had experience conducting interviews for both the university paper and community television several years prior, I was really excited to have the opportunity to do so again.
Wow! I’m blown away by that number and the sheer talent of the people I’ve been able to meet.
The first interview I did with DOPEfm, is available as a podcast. After that, I decided that I wanted to see the interviews on my blog as well. So I started transcribing the interviews so that you can read them too.
When I interviewed Olympic Ice Dance Champions
Tessa Virtue and Scott Moir, I was asked to write
an article and not just a Q&A like all of my transcripts have been. I really enjoyed writing that article. It reminded me of the few I’d written back for the university paper. That article was published in
The Londoner Newspaper. I’m really excited about that.
I worked all of the interviews I did with the
Olympic Athletes into full articles instead of transcripts. It really has me wondering what is better, a transcript or an article? What are your takes on this? Have you enjoyed my transcripts or my articles more? Or is there room for both?
I transcribed the interview I did with hip-hop artist
Eternia but I wrote several articles around the one I did with
D-sisive. I am quite proud of both of these projects. I found that I didn’t really save any time writing the articles. Transcribing or writing interviews takes quite a bit of time. They also seem to take up about the same amount of space in type. Both of these interviews were presented over several blog posts.
So, what’s your vote?
Q&A type transcripts, articles, or it depends?
Thanks for weighing in?
5 responses to “Q&A vs Articles”
Articles are easier to read.
If you really want to know what the person said and not the interviewer's impressions, Q&As are better. If you are doing research and need direct quotes, Q&As are the way to go.
S
Hi Silverfish,
It seems both styles have their advantages. Thanks for weighing in on this topic.
Q&A is much more intriguing to me personally.
Hi Chase .. I think Q & As give us a more specific take & can allow you to go back for a 2nd bite in another direction with that interviewee.
Articles are good – because then they can be broken down into shorter blog posts perhaps .. with a link ..
It's giving yourself future options – perhaps is the way to look at it ..
Bye – Hilary
Hi John Graham,
Thanks for weighing in 🙂
Hi Hilary,
I'm surprised that people really seem to like Q&As.
I remember hearing somewhere that Q&As are just lazy journalism. I didn't want to be lazy so I've been toggling between both styles lately. I think I may continue to do this for a while too.