Email-Only Press Policy

Paul Brown @ 2007-04-24T17:50:00Z

I've never been correctly quoted by the press, and on the off chance that it could have been my fault, I don't bear any grudges over it. (I take that back — I have a bone to pick with the person who quoted me as saying something about "leaving out 20%" instead of talking about hitting the "80% solution".) Contrary to conventional wisdom (which is often wrong), not all press is good press, and press that clouds or confuses your message is bad press.

Jason Calcanis has the right idea:

Journalists have been burning subjects for so long with paraphrased quotes, half quotes, and misquotes that I think a lot of folks (especially ones who don't need the press) are taking an email only interview policy. (Mark Cuban did this long ago)

Unless the interviewer intends to mislead or spring questions on the interviewee, I can't imagine why an email-only policy would be objectionable.

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Comment from Garrett Conaty @ 2007-04-25T12:14:21Z # permalink

it's called a press release :) Seriously, person-person interaction for an interview gives so much more context than responses to a questionaire...would you hire someone based on an email interview?

Comment from Paul Brown @ 2007-04-25T18:06:14Z # permalink

An interesting thought, but I say that it's apples and oranges.

On the one hand, you have a journalist, who may or may not be an expert in the field, left to their own devices to capture quotes and create content based on their notes and recollections. The journalist's goal is to collect, collate, and present information. My experience is that an ad hoc interview process degrades the quality of the information if either written responses or without an editorial review by the interviewee(s) is left out. Also, the content of the interview is for consumption by third parties in a non-interactive mode.

A job interview, on the other hand, is intended to test the knowledge, thinking ability, and communication skills of the interviewee. The content is primarily for the interviewer but also for third parties, each of which has probably had direct contact with the interviewee. Moreover, the consumption of that information is in the interactive forum of an interview debrief where clarifications and revisions can be made by the different observers.