If you want to meet inspiring people, ask them for an interview. This is how I got the chance to meet people that I know from the newspapers: typographer Erik Spiekermann, Rapper Kool Savas, the Musicians Boss Hoss, Architect Thomas Willemeit (Graft), enterpreneur Ralf Anderl (ic! berlin), Food-Activist Ralphael Fellmer, chair designer Werner Aisslinger and director Matthias Lilienthal. People love to talk about their work, they all want to share their findings, their spirit and their genious. And I was feedbacked a lot for my interview approach. We really go deep, because of the one and only question. The most challenging question ever. Do you have a clue what thid could be?
There are a few, who never responded to my interview request, but they are rare (Christian Stadil, CEO of the sportsbrand Hummel for example).
Of course you should not fake it and publish the interviews later on. Offer it to some independent newspapers or blogs – they are all happy about volunteer contributors. But if you don’t work for a newspaper, simply create your own: Launch a blog. I also do it when I travel. When I was in Shanghai (for vacation) I read about this architect Teng Kun Yeng, who set up the Shanghai Creative Industry in old military warehouses and I wrote him a mail to ask for an interview. He said that he usually doesn’t give interviews to chinese journalists (Kun Yeng is very critical towards the chinese government), but as a german journalist I was welcome.
Here you find some tipps how to become a journalist. Yes, you can do that. No need for a gratification. The title of a journalist in Germany is not protected by law, unlike architect or psychologist or professor. Everybody can be a journalist here. Actually I have a blog and I write a lot publically – so I am kind of a journalist too although I have never visited a journalism school.
But before we get into details of the journalistic toolbox, let us first discuss the role of a journalist. if you look at the current situation of journalism you will realize that the ethos of the profession in journalism has to renew itself radically. Big newspapers collapses, till today there are probably just two journalistic online pages that makes money: Spiegel online and Neon.de (well actually the content on Neon is written by unpaid writers from the Neon crowd). Axel Springer has redefined its business model recently and now wants their journalists creating content like modular text blocks, that you can reuse and recycle online offline and in all Axel Springer products. It’s the success story of Volkswagen group that makes Volkswagen so succesful: Put the same content (engine) in a Seat and in a Golf, but add some features in the Golf so we can sell it much much more expensive although inside it’s nothing but a Seat. I do not understand, what engineers find so innovative about that. It’s like McDonalds: They offer a Royal TS (even sounds like a car) and a Hamburger and a Cheeseburger. And everywhere you find the same odd pads. Wow that’s super genious. Actually it’s efficient, but it doesn’t make the Royal TS better than a Hamburger.
In the beginning of journalism people have invented a medium, in which they inform about the things that happen in your neighborhood, in your town, in your country and abroad: The journal. The journal could be a daily issue, weekly, monthly or annual issue, and the term issue explains what the content was about: Informing about issues of the current time. Actually, the first european journal was called “Relation” and was published by a preacherman’s son called Johann Carolus in 1605 in Strassburg. At that time Carolus wrote (manually page by page!) about unsecure european trade ways because of pirates and the new findings of Galileo. And of course the clericals, the royals and the universities have tried to influence what people read and think. Journalism is meant to be neutral, not written from one’s point of view. If so you can write a comment, a column (like Carrie Bradshaw) or a recension in a chapter, that french journalists called the feuilleton. Feuilletonists think they are artists. They aren’t.
And there are some basic rules: Come up with some news (if there is no news, invent one), fill up your article with at least two statements from two different people, which show the different points of view on your issue and very important: Use at least 3 or 4 figures to make your article look like a scientifically serious writing. That’s why journalists always want to know how old you are. If you google my name you will recognize that a lot of journalists introduce me as a “young” architect. Well, I am 37 years old. Mies Van der Rohe has built his very first house, when he was 21. Marcel Breuer invented the Wassily chair at the same age. I am not young, I look like a young man, but in comparison to the other architects I am not. So the age is somehow overrated, I look young I behave like a teenager when I show up at lectures with my skateboard. Yes that’s me, the age is not important. And journalists always want to know how many people really have assembled furniture after my blueprints on www.hartzivmoebel.com. Well, actually I don’t know, but I do know that on facebook there are more than 16.000 followers today and the most popular youtube video is the image movie about the one-sqm-house with more than 900.000 clicks. And there around 10 people downloading the plans everyday from my site. I don’t know why but if you add some figures into your text it becomes more true. Of course you need to doublecheck the facts that your interviewpartner says. Actually none of the journalists ever did. Neither Spiegel journalists, nor BZ-reporters. I could tell them I have 10 or 100 downloads everyday, they would just take over this figure. I could easily prove it by showing them my dashboard on my blog site, but nobody ever asked. People need figures and facts, feed them with a few. And of course there should be a dramaturgical structure.
I know three different styles:
1. Top down (press text)
Start with the most important facts in the first five sentences: What did when who how and why? The details come later. The headline should function like a summary. This is a top down approach, you can crop the text from the back easily without cropping the main information. Because these are in the beginning.
2. Work with story brackets
Start with a question and end up with the answer of it. Or start with an interesting quote and refer to it at the end of the text.
3. Reportage style
Let the reader dive in a new interesting world. Describe what the protagonist sees, hears, feels, smells. Describe the environment. Make sure you have contrasting pictures. Refer to this described world at the end and make a glimpse into the future of your protagonist.
My favorite question I confront my interview partners with is one of the shortest questions ever and at the same time the most powerful: why?
In terms of: Why are you doing all this? What urges you? Was there an initial key moment in your life. And I wonder that in most cases my interview partner wonders that no journalist before was wondering about the why. Simply the most important question.