Click on the following link to find the Interview Log Form.
Use this form to "log" your interview. Describe each minute of the interview. What happened, what did the interview subject say, what key names or organizations were mentioned, what was the key story idea or (more likely) what were the key ideas, what year is covered, is it worth pulling a brief direct quote? If it is quotable, then put the quote into the log, with quotations marks around it, of course.
Every five minutes or so, you should stop and take stock. Do you have the gist? Does it make sense to you? Remember that these do not have to be complete sentences, but they should be complete and clear ideas, separate each thought with semicolons and try to spell correctly.
Logging an interview should take about 1 hour. When you are done, I want you to answer the following questions:
- What were the best five periods of the interview, and why?
- What did you (or the interviewer) do well?
- What could you (or the interviewer) have improved upon?
- What additional questions would you ask this interview subject, if we had them back?