Interview Habits That Will Get Your Story Killed

If you have spent years reading a favourite News platform and finally decided to try journalism yourself, the interview stage is where most beginners quietly fall apart. Not because they lack curiosity, but because they follow advice that sounds sensible and is not.

Mistakes Worth Naming Directly

Do not walk into an interview with a script of ten prepared questions. Sources read the room instantly, and a clipboard mentality shuts down honest conversation before it starts.

Do not let silence make you nervous enough to fill it. The pause after a question is where the real answer often lives. Rushing past it is one of the costliest habits in the room.

Resources That Address These Habits Honestly

• The Poynter Institute online library — free articles specifically on interview technique, including what veteran reporters stopped doing after their first decade.
• Columbia Journalism Review archives — case studies of interviews that went wrong and the decisions behind them.
• IRE tipsheets (Investigative Reporters and Editors) — practical, unglamorous guidance written by working journalists.

One More Thing to Stop Doing

Do not record an interview and then transcribe it word for word as your notes. You will miss the moments that did not get said — the hesitation, the subject change, the deflection. Those gaps are often the story.

Good journalism interviews are not about gathering quotes. They are about noticing what someone is careful not to say, and knowing enough to ask about it.