Sometimes I can only shake my head in disbelief. Take this situation: well before Christmas, a colleague asked a student if she’d like to be interviewed for our weekly series Sing, fight, cry, pray, laugh, work and admire. In this series, we interview students and staff about their studies, work and private lives. We ask them all sorts of personal questions – about their struggles, their regrets, their proudest moments. In other words, it’s a deeply personal interview. To make sure the interviewee understands what they’re agreeing to, we always send them a link to previously published articles in the series.
The student immediately said yes, without any hesitation. The interview took place a few days later, and our photographer took a photo. Two weeks after that, we sent the interviewee the article so she could fact-check it before publication – standard practice for this kind of story. It usually comes back with no comments or one or two minor points. Job done, the journalist thinks.
Huh?
But this time – and not for the first time – it was a different story. The interviewee thanked us for sending her the article but said she had changed her mind. She didn’t want it published after all: “Too personal.” Huh? That’s the whole point of the series, as we’d made clear from the outset. The interview itself left no room for misunderstanding, either. While fortunately rare, it does sometimes happen that people get cold feet when they see their story set down in writing. In these cases, we sit down with them to find out the root of the problem. It’s often a specific passage they’re worried about, typically because they’re afraid of how others might interpret it. We’re usually able to tweak things to put their mind at ease.
So, that was our plan: talk to the interviewee. But between Christmas and the first working week of January, we didn’t hear back from her.
Sit down
What now? That was the question at this week’s editorial meeting. The article, already translated, is scheduled for publication next week. How could someone not realise that agreeing to such an interview is not a casual arrangement? A journalist, a photographer and a translator have all invested time and effort into the article. And of course the end result gets published on our website and in our newspaper – why else would we conduct interviews? As much as we enjoy meeting interesting people, we don’t do it just for fun.
So, we sent the interviewee another email. This time, thankfully, she replied. I'm confident things will work out.