How To Write a News Report

A good article should give the reader the feel of the atmosphere of the conversation the interviewer had. This post provides a three step guide to writing a good interview article on the basis of the information obtained during an interview.

A. Choose a perspective

An interview can be written from different perspectives. There are roughly three perspectives you can use.

• Literal. Write down the questions, followed by the literal or only slightly rephrased answers. You may use bold, italic or the letters Q and A to distinguish questions and answers.

Q: John, do you like your job? A: Yes, I like being a truck driver.

• Hybrid. Leave out the questions and combines narrative statements with direct quotes.

John is content with his job. “I like being a truck driver.”

• Narrative. Describe what the interviewee says in third person

I ask John about his job and he tells me he likes truck driving.

The first perspective suits best for a very personal interview, the last suits best for an article where the interview part is merely a means of getting more information on a certain topic.

B. Rephrase the answers

Conversation is full of half sentences, unspoken words and sudden changes of topic. To make the interview readable, you”ll have to rephrase most sentences. There’s a simple rule of thumb concerning rephrasing.

Rephrase as much as you like, but don’t change the message.

So, you might rephrase every sentence in order to make it fit your preferred style of writing, as long as the interviewee can find no reason to complain about his or her message being changed.

C. Make it attractive

People need to be persuaded to read your interview article. There should be quotes in the following elements of the article:

• Interview title
• Streamers (a large headline printed across the page)
• Photo captions 

Moreover, the lead of the article can be more telling by ending it with a quote.