Blog 6-NPR Radio Interview Analysis

Weekend Edition from NPR News, interviewer Scott Simon knew a lot of information about music R&B artist Jay Sean before the actual interview. For example, the interviewer knew that Jay Sean wasn’t the superstar’s birth name. The interviewer did his homework and researched about this artist’s background history. Knowing that Mr. Jay Sean had gone to medical school to become a doctor. Then surprisingly made a 360-degree turn to the music industry. Scott Simon said, “A self professed science geek is the best selling British male artist since Elton John.” The interviewer basically knew about all the accomplishments that Jay Sean has made during his current music career.

Scott Simon eased in with questions about his family and their background story. Asking questions about what it was like for his grandparents to move from India to London. Also questions like, what music put the first spark of interest for music into this R&B artist? The first couple of questions were very basic in a way to make the interviewee feel more comfortable. As time progressed the questions got less generic. This interviewer stated facts about Jay Seans up and coming story to stardom to build up to questions about his early years in music. Scott Simon played old demos from this artist which helped follow up to further questions about his past works.

A strategy I noticed that this particular interviewer used was being a professional, yet casually asking questions as topics smoothly came up. There was no force for answers; which in turn gave the interviewee the freedom to speak his mind. The apparent relationship between the interviewer and interviewee was on a professional first time basis.

I learned that interviewing could be difficult. Taking the time to learn about your interviewee can help an interviewer out in the long run. Knowing background information about the person beforehand helps make it seem like there is some sort of relationship between the two people.