Overview: "Interviews" - a fancy word for when a regular person (or, on occasion, a famous person who is famous for interviewing other famous people and nothing else, like Oprah) asks questions to a famous person, writes down both the questions and responses, and then edits the famous person's responses so that they do not come across as intellectually inferior and unable to form coherent thoughts and phrases - are becoming more and more popular in the world of journalism, and readers especially enjoy them, especially the "Q and A" (journalism lingo for "question and answer") form, largely because they are shorter and have fewer long words and no boring expository (or "describey") information.
Q: Why should you care?
A:
The "interview" form actually dates back to Ancient Roman times, as indicated by the Latin roots of word itself : from the Latin "inter", which means "between two or more" (and just assume it's talking about two or more people), and "view", which means "view". So "interview" actually means "the view between two or more people", even though, technically, only one person's views are being represented. But Latin was pretty restrictive that way.
Above: "The surge is working"
In fact, the interview was pioneered/invented by Julius Caesar, who came before the Romans and said, "Friends, Romans, Countrymen...lend me your ears!" (but in Latin), and then presumably fielded questions from the crowd (now known as a "press corps") who would ask him how he felt about how great he was, and how that campaign in Carthage was going, and if he felt the media was ever too harsh on him, etc. These days, this kind of interview is also known as a "press conference" or a "junket", but we're going to stick to the sorts of interviews that people actually care about.
Interviews people actually care about are always ones with celebrities.
Above: Ahhhhh...YAY!!!!! Look at how famous we are (clapclapclap)!
In almost all of these cases, that famous person has something to do with American Idol.
American Idol is a unique source of famous people, largely because its three "hosts" are/were a) the not-famous back-up musician for creatively bankrupt bands like Journey, b) long-since expired flash-in-the-pan pop singers with slurred speech and brain cells that appear to actually die on camera/married to Emilio Estevez, c) some British guy who's sort of famous in Britain for making several British sort-of-musicians kind-of famous and who everybody boos at, and Ryan Seacrest.
Above: (from left) Ryan Seacrest, "A", "B", and "C".
The only other people to appear on the show are an overwhelming number of singers who don't win and won who, every season, eventually does win. But even in the case of those who do win, some of them turn out to be Taylor Hicks.
Above: Really?
Indeed, American Idol's celebrity-making abilities seem as unlikely on paper as they are absolute in reality. Still, tradition holds that even showing up on camera in the audience of American Idol or having a gruesomely bad audition makes someone interview-worthy.
Above: William Hung discusses the subprime mortgage crisis on CBS's "The Early Show"
And thus if you actually end up singing on stage in American Idol you are a bona-fide celebrity and deemed even more interview-worthy than other celebrities/famous people. The formula essentially works as such:
The longer you actually remain on American Idol, the longer you remain interview-worthy. So let's say you make it to the final 6 contestants of any given season of Idol. This means, if you do nothing for the next six years, you will still be worthy of being interviewed for the following six years. This lease can be renewed by doing anything anybody cares about, and none of the above applies at all to Taylor Hicks.
As a prime and quite current example of an interview, I have decided to include some of the text of one such piece by Lilit Marcus in an interview with American Idol season 6 non-winner Chris Sligh. This interview originally appeared on the website Beliefnet.com, with which I have no affiliation whatsoever and so it's not even worth Googling to find out I do, because I don't.
The full interview is available HERE. (**And, for another example of an interview conducted by Lilit with another grating person suffering from delusions of grandeur who also claims to have God on her side though apparently not the same God who can declare you the winner of American Idol, click HERE**)
Above: Lilit Marcus, with whom I have no professional affiliation, during her interview with American Idol failure, Chris Sligh.
As we go through each question and answer, I will comment on the effectiveness and content of the interview, which should help you understand what to look out for should you decide that either interviewing or interview reading would be right for you:
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Q: How do you define Christian music?
A: I don't know that I would define Christian music. I don't know that Christian is an adjective—it's more of a noun. So, I don't know that there is Christian music. I would say that I'm a believer. Christianity defines who I am, so, any music that comes out of me is going to be encapsulated into me singing about my beliefs and religious system.
Okay, bad start. Notice how, in this question, the famous person has come off not sounding intellectually competent, as he has demonstrated that he is unaware that nouns have definitions just as adjectives do. For instance, the noun "noun" has a definition, which is "a person, place, thing, or idea". Other nouns with definitions include cats, baseball, and women. Also, Sligh says he does not "know that there is Christian music", but pay careful attention to later segments of the interview, where Sligh speaks quite knowingly about Christian music (and is thus obviously aware of its existence). It would have been in Ms. Marcus' best interest to have edited Sligh's response down to the first sentence of Sligh's repsonse ("I don't know that I would define Christian music") and then moved on. Speaking of which...****************
Q: On your blog, you've linked to the Barack Obama "Yes, We Can" video. Do you agree with him politically?
A: I'm not a politician. I don't really feel like it's my place to talk a lot about politics.
Okay, great! Perfect! Had Sligh stopped right here(or Ms. Marcus simply edited his comments down to these two statements), this would have been concise and true. Aside from the fact that this statement is contrary to everything American Democracy stands for, it is at least a short and fairly coherent response. It is made worse, however, by the fact this it is also contradicted by the extraordinary amount about politics Sligh goes on to talk about.
A (cont.): I like a lot of what Barack Obama stands for. I'm in the middle of reading his second book. I read his first book and really appreciate his view on a lot of things. It seems a lot more reasonable than so many politicians nowadays, both on the right and the left. It seems like even though he would define himself as a liberal Democrat...
To Chris Sligh's credit, in fact the only people who would not define Barack Obama as a liberal Democrat would be liberals, Democrats, and Barack Obama.
A (cont.): his views are actually more moderate than just about any Republican or Democrat that I know of.
(See Above)
A (cont.): He's a brilliant orator, which I think America needs at this point. I think that we need somebody that's going to be able to handle criticism and maybe wipe away some of the sins that our current president has inflicted on the world. When it comes to Bush, I think he is a great man. I think he's a man of God. [But] I think he, in his recent years, has not presented America in a light that I think America maybe should be presented in.
Sorry, you still awake? Okay. Then I assume you made it to this statement: "When it comes to Bush, I think he is a great man [emphasis added]. I think he's a man of God. [But] I think he, in his recent years, has not presented America in a light that I think America maybe should be presented in." And thus I hope you did no suffer an aneurysm.
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Q: Every year as there's a new season, there are dozens more "Idol" contestants trying to get record deals and trying to become famous. How do you make yourself different from them and stand out?
A: I think the difference between me and every other "Idol" that I know of—I've done a lot of research on this— is that I was the first to come in and have had a successful indie career before "Idol." I sold about 35,000 records completely independently.
I played 75 to 100 shows for the last four or five years straight. I traveled around for years as an artist and had actually built up a following, had developed my songwriting more than I think any other "Idol" has. I'd actually won national songwriting contests. I have always thought of myself more as a songwriter than I have as a singer.
Hey. It's John. I just thought I'd slide in here. Can you believe this guy is still talking? Pretty much, you can skip the rest of this, because he just goes on to talk about about how great he is and how much better he was than the person who actually won Idol, which, to be fair, was Jordin Sparks, but really he wasn't even as good as Blake or the kid who looked like Justin Timberlake with a pituitary disorder. It's just unbelievable how much this guy talks about how great he is. You can stop, if you want.
I think that that's one of the things that will set [my album] apart. It doesn't mean that I'm going to sell millions and millions of records. In fact, I don't know that my goal is to sell millions and millions of records, although that would be nice. My goal is just simply to be successful enough that I can make a second record and then to be successful enough to make a third record and to be able to tour most of the year.I received phone calls or e-mails from 11 labels the day that I got voted off. It's because I had cultivated relationships within the industry. The way that I viewed "American Idol" is this: It was not an end all, it was just a means to an end.
And that's the difference between me and almost every other "American Idol" competitor. I was using it for a PR tool so that I could get a record deal and put out great music and hopefully the music finds its way to the people. All "American Idol" does is put me in front of 35 million people. I never wanted to win it (sorry, I just had to highlight that. -John) I never was in it to win it. I wanted to do well enough that I could get a record deal and sell 200,000 records because with the deal that I'm in right now, 200,000 records is going to pay me more than if I'd sold two million with a major label deal.
Wow. And then, finally:
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Q: Why did you ultimately decide to sign to this label [Brash Music]?
A: I actually didn't sign with a Christian label. I signed with a mainstream label that happens to do Christian music also.
OOPS! Remember how he didn't know that Christian music existed?
A (cont.): Our main distribution is through ADA, which is a Warner Brothers independent label distribution. I had three Christian-based labels that were fighting over me, but I just didn't feel like that that's where I wanted to be. I did want to be able to make music that would go to the church. I feel like the church is my home.
So Chris Sligh, who is famous enough to be interviewed and not even want to win American Idol, can't afford his own place and lives in a church.
A (cont.): I've been a worship leader my whole life. I grew up in the church, and I really felt like I wanted the church be my home base, but I wanted the option to do more things.
Mmmmm.
But I would not be a reputable journalist if I simply left this as the only example of an interview. It is my responsibility to provide an alternative, or "counterpoint". So, tapping into my vast network of contacts, with a little luck I was able to track down Ms. Marcus and conduct an interview with her. In this case, Ms. Marcus is the famous person and I am the interviewer (NOTE: pay careful attention to the nature of these responses as they are printed as you use the final "draft" of this interview to compare to the final "draft" of the Sligh interview):Q: Lilit, what do you think of politics?
A:I get tired of listening to people argue
Q: Lilit, what do you think of religion?
A: I'm not allowed to say, or I might get fired.
Q: Lilit, what do you think of Chris Sligh?
A: He's a pretentious, preening douche who totally lied to me about internet message boards.
RATING: ** (out of 4)
BOTTOM LINE: Do you seriously care what this person...
....thinks?
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