It’s the eighties/nineties. A company making money from logistics wants to chat, and has invited specialised magazines to a press lunch. As editor of a logistics magazine I accept; I intend to ask questions and take photographs.
I don’t have to do this. Lazier hacks will listen with incomprehension
to the set speeches, eat the lunch and drink the wine (to excess), pick up the
company’s press releases with studio-perfect prints and publish them with nary
a correction.
My questions will be beyond the assistant press relations
manager and eventually I’ll be cloistered with the CEO. Probably he’ll find some
questions difficult to answer. Back at the office I’ll write a piece that
contains none of the bland, self-serving utterances of the press releases.
There’ll be splashes of humour too. I’ll have made an impression. The world
will open up and I’ll interview CEOs in Portland, Tokyo and Mjőllby (that’s
Sweden).
To further sicken you let me add I was moderately well paid
for this. After I retired the magazine faded and died. An easy life, then?
Compared with coal-mining, yes. But asking significant questions depends on
knowing the field. It helped that logistics (a vital tool in improving
industrial efficiency) interested me. Also I enjoyed finding out how they did
things elsewhere.
Asking questions is not at all like conversation. The
questioner chooses the direction, changes the gears and varies the speed. CEOs
get used to being interviewed and the trick is to ask them something new. That
makes them think. Say the subject is a new realtime stock control software package.
Just understanding what it does may test you. Being clever requires foxiness.
I couldn’t do it now. I can’t think on my feet any more.
More interesting than coal mining, though.
Those must have been exciting moments.
ReplyDeleteColette: Only when things went wrong. But then I could always blame the interviewee for that.
DeleteWhat a great story. I think there's been a noticeable change in the quality of interviewing and reporting lately. Being prepared and actually familiar with the language and content of the subject matter sounds like a perfect way to interview someone. I would love to know more of your interviews from around the world.
ReplyDeleterobin andrea: When I was editor of a catering magazine, I interviewed the catering manager of the World Health Organisation HQ, a huge building in Geneva, the French-speaking part of Switzerland.
DeleteWe spoke in French. Which can lead to disappointments. Responding to one of my questions (I forget which) she said: "II faut garder la gaieté de la cuisine." which sounded bloody marvellous me. And so it was in French. Translated into English, literally, it became somewhat lumbering: "One must always maintain the kitchen's happiness." I was tempted to leave it in French but I was writing for English readers. It would have seemed like showing off (which is probably what I wanted to do).
See also below my response to Sir Hugh's comment.
la gaieté de la cuisine is lovely...
DeleteMarly: I thrilled as she said it. As if she had uttered:
DeleteIf this be error and upon me proved,
I never writ, nor no man ever loved.
impromptu and without reflection. Alas for the need to render it into English.
Hmmm, questions I've asked? I was nearly kicked out of my confirmation class and threatened to not be confirmed two days before, I had to change my major in college after two years, because I questioned the head of the department in public about a 3 day unorganized/unguided, required, expensive field trip to Chicago Art Institute and Museum for a lousy Manet show, and the list does go on and on. If you are in a field where questions can help you, YAY! I've found inadequate people/leaders really don't like answering tough questions in public or private. Working for big chain stores was a nightmare. Managers I could deal with, but 'suits', district managers and above---never wanted a question or a truthful answer from a lower employee. As for humor...you know that head cock, when humor has been inserted and completely gone over their head...LOL. Have you ever been interviewed and found questions difficult or ...?
ReplyDeleteSandi: You may have changed your attitude had you attended my school which I'm glad to say I left aged 15. Being "cheeky" (a word with a wide range of interpretations) usually led to being lashed across the bum with a flexible cane. Or, in the case of a Welsh master with the euphonious first name of Iolo, being grasped by one's cheeks and pulled off one's seat over the front of the desk.
DeletePoliticians rarely answer tough questions. Instead they answer a softer question you never asked. Doing drill during my National Service with the RAF I was asked a deliberately nasty question by a raucous corporal. I answered ambiguously and I spent the whole of the forthcoming weekend scraping rancid fat from grill-trays in the camp kitchen. After that I shovelled coal. Coal dust stuck to my fat-impregnated overalls and that led to other problems. For the subsequent 22 months I confined my answers to formal questions to "Yes." and "No." both uttered obsequiously.
See also my response to Sir Hugh, below.
Hah, this comment from you needs to grow into a post!
DeleteI wasn't surly or cheeky, but bolstered with truth, facts, and examples. I suppose nothing is worse than that combination. Now I would be just plain surly, and call them Arses.
DeleteI have commented with my own post:
ReplyDeletehttp://conradwalks.blogspot.com/2021/01/trumpet-blowing.html
Both: Brother Sir Hugh read this and matched it with a post in Conrad Walks describing a couple of his sales forays. Not exactly comparing apples with apples
ReplyDeleteI responded:
Where did you get "wheedling" and "hopefully" from? There were of course occasions when people were trying to persuade me to publish mere puffery. Then I would be taken out to lunch and immediately handed the wine list; I was in fact being "sold to".
Interviewing is rather different from selling. Often the interviewee would read the resultant article and be astonished by his apparent wisdom and brevity. On one occasion I hammered an MD with difficult questions in public at a press conference, revealing that his company was not half as "green" as he imagined.
The result was unexpected. One of his satraps phoned me and said the MD wanted me to address his team of salesmen who would all be drunk after their annual sales meeting. That the MD would brief me in his London club. There, the MD said "Tell 'em anything you like but avoid the subject of company cars."
Guess what I majored on in my speech? The applause was thunderous.
It was my first formal speech ever in public and my knees trembled throughout, despite the laughter. But I was able to comfort myself by the fact that a hired car picked me up from home and took me back. Also I felt slightly less guilty about the cheque now nestling in my pocket.
Could also fatten into a post. Words on work from the point of view of the person doing the work tend to be interesting. Yours, anyway.
DeleteMarly: My posts (other than short stories), as the home page warning reads, are limited to 300 words. No one has ever complained that they are too short, so expansion is out.
DeleteI think your comment qualifies for Post hoc ergo propter hoc. I have used the anecdote before but have relied on the traditional justification:
... but that was in another country,
And besides, the wench is dead..."
I have recycled much of my journalistic life in a novel as yet unpublished. Second hand in which a young woman is forced to give up the profession she loves and faute de mieux becomes a journalist. For some reason - fear, perhaps - I have never submitted it anywhere for informed judgment. I suspect that anyone who reads it and is familiar with the word, would say the story is determinist.
The problem with dredging up experiences that illustrate what I did for 44 years is that the end-product would be merely a string of adventures. What would be far more absorbing - if only to me - would be the way continuous day-to-day writing can, if the author wills it, be a process of slow but recognisable refinement.