ABSTRACT
Skill in interviewing, as Chapter 8 demonstrates, is an essential part of the information-gathering process. In this chapter we analyse that skill more closely. When the feature is based on an interview (or interviews), when the interviewee or what the interviewee has to say is the whole subject, interviewing is a much more complex operation. We get back to telephone and email methods but it is the face-to-face ones that will demand most attention. The terms ‘interview’ and ‘profile’ are applied interchangeably to a feature about one interviewee, but I shall use the latter term more strictly – when talking about the longer, more rounded portrait of an individual derived from various sources (sometimes without a byline).
