Barbara walters ,who was once a ter

Barbara walters ,who was once a terrible interviewer , has become a fairly competent one. She does not interrupt as often as she once did ,and she tends less that formerly to think that she can anticipate the interviewee’s answer and supply it in her question. Her progtess is proof that interviewing is a learnable skill.
Gathering your equipment together and, if you will be taping, checking to see that the recorder is working well are important aspects of preparation. It should be unnecessary to say that it is poor practice for the interviewer to expect the interviewee to supply paper and pencil for not taking, yet it has happened more than once. Carrying pencils, note pads, recorder, batteries, release forms, and so on in a briefcase or satchel, rather than arriving with your hands full, will help relax everyone, including probably you, most of all.
There are some general guidelines that may help you decide whether you need a tape recorder. You should almost certainly record the interview if you take a preservationist view of you role. That is, if you are collection or for publication, you will want every word to be accurate. Some print journalists are skeptical of the use of the tape recorder in oral history, but they do not understand the need to preserve documents with as much accuracy and integrity as possible. On the other hand, if you, like a newspaper reporter , are conducting the interview for your own writing and expect no further use to be made of the material, a recorder may interfere with spontaneity and be counterproductive. Social scientists who have interviewed without sound recorders have confirmed the accuracy of their notes by having the interviewee check them. Note taking seems especially likely to be accurate enough if the information you hope to obtain is of a hard, factual kind (in the exteral sense discussed in chapter 1). Yet if you are taking a cultural approach, where detail and thickness are essential, a recorder may be a useful aid to your memory, even if you expect no further use to be made of the interview after you have written your paper. And listening to the tape is the best way to improve your interviewing skill.