Don’t panic and calm down during interviews!

It happens to even experienced journalists – faced with a famous person or someone we admire, we get so nervous that we forget to do our job properly. In the latest post of our series on difficult and challenging interviews, journalists Marina Soboleva and Armine Agaronyan reflect on two situations where talking to prominent people left them tongue-tied. They offer some advice on how not to fall into the same trap.

Marina Soboleva

Russian journalist Marina Soboleva doesn’t like thinking about her interview with singer Yulia Kogan from the immensely popular band Leningrad.

“It still makes me shudder.

At the time, I was working at a new online project which was trying to present standard news in an unusual way. It was important that we got that interview to show that stars were happy to work with us.

I met Yulia in a hotel lobby just before the band was about to give a concert. Yulia was in a hurry and she gave very short answers. And I didn’t have time to get her talking because the amount of time we had for the interview was limited.

The main problem was that the research I had done before the interview, I felt all the questions I wanted to ask her had been asked before. To cap it all off, I was running a temperature and could hardly talk.

The interview was a total flop. Users on YouTube where I posted the video expressed their disappointment with the poor interview.

My advice to the journalists in a similar situation: if you are going to interview an important person, act as confident as possible. Don’t hesitate and don’t try to improve your questions as you go. That only shows your uncertainty and lack of experience. Even you become overexcited and are worried you are talking nonsense, don’t panic – just keep going.”

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Armine Agaronyan

Armenian journalist Armine Agaronyan works for the TV Kanal newspaper in the Armenian capital, Yerevan. She found interviewing the experienced Russian journalist, writer and director Andrey Maximov – one of her personal idols – a nerve-racking experience.

“Andrey Maximov has always been a role model for me as a journalist, especially when it came to things such as interview techniques. Because of that I wanted to be at my best during the interview with him.

I was interviewing Maximov via Skype and was really nervous since I wasn’t used to doing interviews that way. In Yerevan, journalists usually conduct interviews via email, over the phone or in person. It was my first experience with a Skype interview.

When the interview began, Maximov was very calm and relaxed. I, on the other hand, was overexcited and forgot everything I was going to ask him. I was so nervous that I even almost forgot my mother tongue and Maximov had to calm me down.

In the end, I managed to ask the questions I had planned to ask. Still, this interview is one of those I’m not happy with. The experience taught me not to panic and stay focused during an interview. I would recommend that aspiring journalists prepare themselves as much as possible for an interview, to calm down and not to let emotions overwhelm them, as difficult as it might be.”

Interviews: Natalia Karbasova