About:

A successful interview begins well before you press record. In this webinar, you’ll learn some of the techniques that will help you, as interviewer, get the tape that makes for a compelling, edifying listen — including booking guests, pre-interviewing for substance, and crafting the right questions.

What you’ll learn:

-Before the interview begins, ask yourself: Where does this conversation fit in the context of your piece? Drill down to the one driving question, above all, that the conversation needs to answer to make the story work.
-Speak with your guest before you start to record for real, and find the vital beats of their narrative — the details that stuck with you, the keys to building your case. These are the beats on which to build and elaborate your interview script.
-In finding, speaking with, and editing a guest, center the human. Prioritize emotion over conclusiveness. Don’t shy from silences, difficult thoughts, or the points that defy your assumptions. This is where you find your emotional payoff.

About the speaker:

Theo Balcomb created The Daily at The New York Times in 2017. Under her leadership, the podcast reached an audience of more than 4 million listeners a day and more than 200 public radio stations, won a duPont award, and served as part of multiple Pulitzer Prize-winning submissions from The New York Times. Before The Daily, she was the youngest-ever supervising producer of All Things Considered at NPR. These days, she is working as an independent editor and producer on projects across the audio industry, including the podcast Song Exploder and The Washington Post’s investigative series Broken Doors, a 2023 Pulitzer finalist.