Once more on email interviews
: In the comments, below, Matt Welch adds his wisdom and experience to the nanodebate on bloggers publishing email interviews before reporters publish them:
If you don’t want your e-mail published? Say “don’t post this, but…” I do this with Luke Ford at social occasions all the damned time, and Jeff & I certainly have done it back and forth with each other in the past. And I might suggest, nastily, that if you don’t want your e-mailed questions to be published, well, maybe you shouldn’t send them in the first place. I see no reason why the asker should enjoy the proprietary rights to an interview conversation, and I see every reason why it would be good for the interviewee to post the transcripts ASAP. It’s more information, it protects the sources from getting unfairly hosed, it takes the reporter’s high horse down a useful peg or two, and it shines more light on the journalism process. I see absolutely nothing wrong with any of that.
And Sheila Lennon adds, in the comments here:
Fast forward to Sept. 2006: The town council president uses voice-dictation software and blogs her entire phone interview with Jimmy Olsen of The Daily Planet.
Is Jimmy Olsen gonna threaten not to use her as a source again?
Everybody’s gonna have the tools to publish everything. And they will.
Right. Everybody has a printing press now.
