
Hi,
I consider myself a bad journalist. Despite making a living from it for the past 7 or 8 years, having interviewed over a hundred people across business, art, culture, and psychology, I often feel like I’m starting from scratch with every Q&A. Sure, there are standard professional questions, but there’s always something else—the unexpected, the unspoken. And often, I don’t know how to get there.
To do an interview is to get to know someone. Research gets the surface-level questions out of the way, allowing you to build an image of your subject. But once you’re in the conversation, the cracks in that image often show. My list of questions feels like a safety net, something I cling to out of fear. I read them aloud one by one, reinforcing the version of the person I think I know. But what happens when the person before you is entirely different from what you expected?
Ironically, that’s usually the case.
My first taste of documentary work came in college. I filmed a lesbian pastor at a liberal Christian church in a small, deeply religious town. Many in the town took the Bible literally, while others—like the pastor—interpreted it more liberally. That was the first time I realized that Christianity, like sexuality, existed on a spectrum. I wanted to capture moments of tension: the difficulty of finding acceptance as both a pastor and a lesbian. Instead, our footage revealed the routines of her work and life, her loving relationship with her wife. It was almost as if her sexuality and her faith coexisted in harmony. But of course, there must have been struggles. It was up to her to decide if she trusted us enough to share them.
Last week, I interviewed an accomplished Asian American fiction writer. She had published three books, sold a fourth, and frequently contributed to The New Yorker. Yet during the interview, I was rigid, glued to my question list, and she seemed uncomfortable, shifting in her seat.
She had sacrificed a lot to become a writer, giving up a prestigious doctoral program for a less stable livelihood. A major part of the interview centered on this choice. It became clear that her writing career was a taboo topic in her family. No one in her family had read her books, and the decision had caused an irreparable rift with her parents. She didn’t want to delve further, and I knew I had to respect that boundary.
Afterward, I spent a long time processing the experience. How do you ease into difficult conversations? How do you gain someone’s trust to share their truths? And how do you avoid causing harm when revisiting painful memories? A little voice whispered: You’re scared to learn.
I often question the point of interviews—especially the interviewees being writers. Their work speaks for itself, so what more is there to say? Asking them to dissect their art can feel like drawing over a finished painting with a black marker. It risks ruining the safe distance they’ve created for themselves.
Perhaps that’s why journalists sometimes get a bad reputation. Our words, misinterpreted or spread out of context, can reinforce untruths. And in any interview, there’s always a mask. The subject presents a fragment of themselves to the public, and the best we can hope for is to glimpse a sliver of truth.
And you can never get to know a person with interview, because there is always a mask, you are presenting something of intimate to the public reader, of course the person would hide. The best chances, that you get a fragment of truth.
In today’s world, where everyone curates their identity through social media, journalism feels even more precarious. People blast fragments of their lives online, leaving readers to draw their own conclusions. So what is the purpose of being a journalist? Perhaps the question is naive, but I ask it sincerely.
Until next week,
Rachel