Using Quotes Left in Your Notes: 7 Considerations

There was a recent discussion on a writers' board about using quotes from an interview you did when they didn't make the original piece you were writing. Can you do that? There's no simple answer, and the considerations are as much business relations as they are contractual.

• You must check the contract from the first publication. Some writers assume that they can do what they want with their notes. However, I've seen a few publishers insert wording in a WMFH contract defining the work in question as including all drafts and notes. In that phrasing, you may have no rights to the material.


• If you do own the notes, then there's a question of whether they are quotes or not. If quotes, then the person who said them actually owns the copyright on that part of the material, not you, even though you took them down. Fair use would allow some use in a journalistic or educational context, but you couldn't necessarily present verbatim everything in there, because then you'd be crossing the fair use bound of what percentage you could quote. (And there is no fixed number to use as a guide.)


• You also wouldn't have rights to do anything at all you wanted to with the quotes: for example, using them in a piece of marketing.


• The subject also has some rights in how his or her name is being portrayed. If you misused quotes in a way that painted the person in a bad light (taking quotes out of context, for example), the person could potentially sue you and win.


• Although the courts are mixed on the issue, it's not clear whether someone could say that you only had permission to use the material for the publication you said it was for, and not for another one. What if you wrote another piece and placed it in some magazine espousing views that the subject found repugnant? Could you be sued for making it seem that the person was supporting those views? Possibly. And once you have to defend yourself, you lose, even if ultimately you win, because of all the costs you incur.


• Aside from the legal issues are the practical ones. If you want to speak with someone again, being respectful is smart. That means letting them know what you're doing (unless you say up front that it could appear in other places). You could just state that you would be using the material elsewhere, but that could tick the person off. What if the person says, "I don't want to appear in that publication," or "You misrepresented my views in the first piece and so I don't want you using the material anywhere else?" Can you ignore them? You would at least burn a bridge. There are times you might feel that you had to, but you should make a knowing choice.


• If a PR person was involved in getting the interview and you burn the client, you've also burned the PR source. Again, I'm not suggesting that you tiptoe about to smooth the sensibilities of publicity representatives, but realize what you're doing when you do it.

Some of the solutions include getting a written release from the subject or even taping the subject's provision of assent to your use of the material. I try to remember to tell people up front that I could end up using an interview in some other publication as well, if the topic were similar and/or relevant.

Opting for the Long Open-Ended Interview

During the fall, I was interviewed a number of times regarding my cookbook. Each time, the reporter seemed to have a strict list of questions. It's not that they were close-ended, which is the death of interviewing, but more close-scoped. The writer had a structure already in mind and was looking to fill in the appropriate blanks. Another way of looking at this is that the writer had already written the article, and just needed the requisite finishing details.

That, to me, is an almost unthinkable way of conducting an interview. I don't mean unthinkable in the judgmental and disapproving sense, but unthinkable, as in such an approach rarely occurs to me. Perhaps it's my rambling nature, but I prefer longer interviews - 45 minutes to an hour being a usual amount for me. While that increases the research time of an article, I find that the payoff is immense, which keeps me going back to the same method.

A bit part of what I can offer to editors - and what they specifically have said they like - are the details and unexpected views and insights that they often find in my work. Although having a large dose of ego, I don't mean that as backhanded bragging. I often enter intricacies in subjects that don't often get coverage. I only get those because I don't decide ahead of time what I "need" and let the interview dictate that. It may be that the nature of the stories I do lend themselves to this, but I've also done at least 30 minute interviews, and often longer, even for stories that will only run several hundred words.

Not only do editors like the result, but so do I. the available material is deeper and richer, giving me many more options in structuring and writing the piece, which makes the writing process more enjoyable. I get other story ideas, a lot more information in case I'm doing another take or slant on the story, and I seldom get questions from editors that I can't answer directly from my notes.

Finally, when you provide clients with what they like but seldom get from others, you increase the value you offer and, accordingly, what you can command in compensation. Here are some tips from my time in long interviews:

• Avoid pointed and specific questions. At least early in the interview, skip the particular questions that will net you the information you think you will need for the story. There is always time for those later into the interview. Start by asking about the topic in question. Encourage people to just start talking and see what is important to them. You don't need to make a direct assault on the topic. Use this time to get a lay of the land - a topicgraphic map, if you'll pardon the pun.


• Use what you just learned. Once you've spent some time letting people talk about the topic, you'll realize that you've provided the psychological tool and opportunity for them to show you what they consider most important. Take note, because it can explain what they know best or see as the heart of the issue. Some people will use this as a chance o dictate their own spin, which is fine. Use it as an opportunity to let them get that out. Until they do, you probably won't get anything else.


• Begin exploring. Now that you've figured out the person's relationship to the topic and their interests, you can start to investigate the topic. Continuing with an open-ended interview technique, enter into some of these areas and keep digging. Let them define and describe, even if you think you know what they are saying. There might be an alternative vocabulary that will be important to understand, or you might find that you know squat. That's fine, as you need to know the limits of your knowledge.


• Keep pushing. Remember the basics of who, what, when, where, why, which, and how (WWWWWWH) in reporting? here's where you can use them in a natural and investigative way. Let each be part of the foundation of your being able to describe something that the interview subject says. Don't just repeat, but be sure you know the importance of what they say, its relationship to other parts of your topic, the mechanics of its operation. The questions help you structure a whole picture that you'll then integrate into the other pictures from the other interviews. In doing this, you move from the information-based world of traditional news reporting to the understand-based world of modern journalism.


• Use a topic list, not a question list. Of course there are things you'll need to learn to write the story, and you want to ask those questions. But treat them as topics you need to discuss. Rather than create a topically close-ended question - When did you first start cooking? - you now have a topic of the person's introduction to cooking. You'd start by asking them to talk about their early times cooking, and then move into additional WWWWWWH questions (Who introduced you to cooking? Do you remember the first dish you cooked? Did other people you knew show any interest?) about those early times.


• Ask for help. You've just shown evidence that you're interested in what the person has to say, and not just look for a series of stock answers to plug into your "process." So ask who else might be helpful. You can get some great sources that way.


• Honor the subject. In most articles, you cannot use everything the person said. But you can use things in context, mine the conversation for the points that the interviewee thought were important, and present, as much as possible, the essentials of the person's views. When you do that, you reduce the subject's feelings of having wasted time on just "a quote or two" and increase the sense of having participated in something substantial.

Try these techniques in non-critical situations at first, and see how you can make use of them. Then, as you gain experience, you can bring more depth to your reporting and differentiate yourself from all those "other" writers.

The No Assholes Interview

In a private email list I'm on, someone brought up the book, The No Asshole Rule: Building a Civilized Workplace by Robert Sutton. The context was another writer discussing how unpleasant it was writing a profile about an egotistical, overbearing, famous CEO. That got me to thinking about interviews I've done in the past. There are times you'll deal with unpleasant people in an interview. They may be overt, or could hide intractabilty and disdain behind a facade of, "Oh, it's so interesting to talk to you." Here are some ideas that might help:

• You're Being Played Whether friendly or nasty, the asshole subject is playing you and trying to gain control. Don't think, "Oh, that can't happen to me." It most assuredly can, does, and will. The first step to recovering control is to remember that you do react emotionally and that it probably is happening in any interview. You can be on guard for what you see, not what you don't.


• Do Your Homework To pull control back, which you need to do your job, don't try duking it out in being either unpleasant or icy. Make sure you've prepared and keep a list of potentially tough questions at hand. When someone tries to run over you, pull out some of the harder questions to turn the person back on himself or herself. As Boy Scout reporters say: Be prepared.


• Nonconfrontationally Confront People in the grip of their inner sphincter act like truculent children. Try getting above their behavior as you would for a child. Ask if there is something wrong bringing on the way they act. It might be that they have some personal problem that is a temporary trigger and that the outburst is unusual. But when people are confronted in a calm way, it often startles them back to more human behavior.

You cannot single-handedly reduce the number of unpleasant people in the world, but you can lessen the impact they have on you and your work.

Challenging Interviewees and Tossing the Question List

Many reporters subscribe to the Dragnet school of interviews: have a list of questions and ask for "just the facts, Ma'am." I can't fault doing homework or listening. But I've found that some of my best interviewing comes when I challenge the person on the other end of the conversation. I don't mean jumping in and getting verbally ugly for the sake of conflict, but more having a lot of background research done and questioning people's answers when they don't make sense. It may be that you're not really getting the point, or it could be that the person is saying something off-base - or a combination of the two. But in that case, don't simply take down what the person says. Leave stenography to PR representatives.

In the same vein, be ready to toss out your list of questions. Certainly get the who, what, when, where, why, how, and which out of the way, but also be ready to ask what whim suggests. If you lock yourself too tightly to a preconceived agenda, then, in your own way, you're approaching the interview no differently than a PR person might, knowing what you want to get out of it in advance. Give yourself and your subject a chance to be surprised, and you will be happy with the results.

Doing Things When You Can't

Some writers - and people, in general - seem flustered when they must develop new skills or capabilities, like calling prospects and selling, or interviewing intimidating people. "But I can't do that," they say.

There is a chance that if you're reading this, you fall into this category at least part of the time. We all do. But you can't let that distract you. Of course there are aspects of this business that you can't do. No one is born ready to run a business. People with the most natural affinities for business must learn - a lot. No, you don't know how to do all of this this, but you can develop the skills and experience you need. Just start. Pick an aspect of what you don't know how to do, and then do it. Even if you do it badly, that's fine: Do it again. Again. And again. If you have ever learned how to ride a bike, then you've gone through the process. Eventually you suddenly find yourself doing what was impossible. That's how you grow your business, the impossible made possible, one step at a time.