Virtual Expert: Rich Fee

Rich Fee of Successful Farming magazine was awarded first place in the Human Interest category in the 2006 AAEA Writing Awards Program.

My winning entry in the 2006 AAEA writing contest is about how a young couple was getting started farming. Because that's hardly an original topic, the first trick is to find the right family to write about.

I think the other trick is to weave a significant amount of business detail into what is still basically a human-interest story. Hopefully, those details will give other aspiring farmers information and ideas they can use.

For detail, I rely heavily on tape-recorded interviews. I know a lot of journalists think a tape recorder will make the person they are interviewing feel uncomfortable. I've not found that to be much of a problem with either researchers or farmers. And when I'm interviewing someone, I don't want to be distracted by taking copious notes. I want to be free to engage in a conversation with the person I'm interviewing. (Besides, my handwriting is atrocious.)

Most of my stories deal with crop production. I try to schedule my farm visits when there are photo opportunities. I want to be on farms when people are tilling, planting, spraying, applying fertilizer or harvesting. Consequently, I rarely have the luxury of interviewing farmers in their home, shop or office. I often catch up with them on a rented farm miles from their base when they are pushing hard.

Because of those constraints, I'd rather do a phone interview later when the person I am interviewing is more relaxed and reflective. If I do climb in the tractor cab for an impromptu interview, it's much easier to record the answers on tape than in a reporter's notebook while bouncing across a field. I usually carry a tape recorder in my photo vest.

Other times, if I haven't conducted an interview, I record my thoughts about what I have seen on a farm while it is still fresh in my mind.

I find the tape recorder most helpful for comprehensive interviews. When I'm conducting a phone interview with someone who will be a major source for a story, I usually spend some time preparing. I have a "20 questions" exercise in which I write down 20 questions in whatever order they come to mind. (Sometimes it may be 18 and other times it's 28, but the objective is the same.) When I am conducting the interview, I often start with the first question on my list. But then I pretty much ignore my written questions. By writing new questions for each interview, I have them fresh in mind. And I don't want to go down through a list of questions without paying attention to what the interviewee is saying. (I do sometimes highlight key words I can look at quickly.) Again, I want to engage in a conversation with that person rather than firing one question after another at them without paying attention to what they are saying.

When I am asking permission to tape record an interview, I emphasize the benefits to both of us. I say something like, "I'd like to tape record this if that's okay. It will speed me up and make my notes more accurate."

Rarely has anyone objected to having a tape recorder running. Sometimes during an interview someone will preface a remark by saying, "I don't want this in the story, but. . . ." In that situation, I sometimes flip the tape recorder off as a courtesy.

When the interview has pretty much run its course, I'll say something like, "Well, I think that gives me quite a bit to work with. If you'll give me a minute I'll look down through my questions to see if I missed something." That's when I also ask them if there was something I should have asked them, but didn't. I've found that to be a good way of finding out what is really important to them.

If I am going to write quite a bit about an operation or use several quotes, I usually transcribe the interview shortly before I write the story. It takes me about an hour to transcribe a half-hour interview. (I omit my questions and the small talk.) At that point, I have a clean, easy-to-read transcript of the interview. Plus, by hearing the interview, I pick up on some things I missed the first time and have a lot of it fresh in my mind when I start to write.

I don't write directly from the transcript. I think the biggest danger in using a tape recorder is the potential to simply string a bunch of quotes together. Much of the information gathered in the recorded interview should not be presented as quotes. And the transcript is not usually as organized as the story needs to be. While writing, I typically follow a sketchy topical outline of important points. I then refer to the transcript for direct quotes and specific facts.

Over the years, I have become accustomed to hearing my sometimes rambling questions on tape. I still occassionally wince when half-way through an interview I hear myself ask a question that shows I hadn't fully grasped a point the interviewee was making. But with the tape recorder, I catch some of those errors that might slip through in my notes.

Finally, I think I recapture some of the time spent transcribing interviews by having to make fewer corrections on checking copies.