Radio interview evaluation

1. My assignment was to produce a news interview about a modern day news story.
The news story I chose to base my interview on was about society’s stigma against
public breastfeeding. I chose to use this story for my interview because there are
many social experiments centred around this issue that get recorded and put on
YouTube, Facebook and other public sites to raise awareness. I also feel like this
topic is very much in public interest because everybody has views on it and I don’t
think a lot of the people who disagree with public nursing know the health benefits
and know how natural this form of feeding is. The person who I chose to interview
was a family friend who is a mum and has faced public victimization for feeding
her child.
To get other people’s opinion on my interview I created a survey on Survey Monkey
and emailed it to people of different ages and from different walks of life. I did
this because I thought I could receive different opinions on the interview. For the
survey I asked 7 questions about if the interviewee choice was a good one, if it
appealed to my target audience, and if it was relevant. I also left a comment box
for anybody who had any suggestions on how I could have improved my interview.
The first question I asked was “Do you believe my questions were relevant to the
topic?” I chose to ask this question because whilst I was analysing various
interviews I was thinking why the interviewer is asking this question when it has
nothing to do with the interview. The people I asked came back with the same
answer, the answer they came back with is that the questions were relevant. I feel
like this was one of my strengths because I spent quite a lot of time carefully
choosing my questions to be a way of the interviewee to get her story across and
also to get her views about why she thinks public nursing is so frowned upon.
The second question I asked was “What style would you say my interview is?” I
gave six answers for them to answer. Majority of my replies back told me that they
thought my interview was informative. Even though all of my replies didn’t say
that the interview was informative most did so I’m still taking it as a win because
that was the style I was aiming for. The third question asked was “Do you think the
interview appealed to the target audience (mums)?” I feel like this is the most
important question in my survey because that’s what makes the interview
important because if it doesn’t appeal to the target audience then it’s pretty much
a flop. This was a unanimous answer that came back and the people who were
asked all said it appealed to said target audience. I feel like this is a strength of
the interview because with it being such a strong topic I think it would have been
easy to lose the interest of the audience so if the people I surveyed think it’s still
appealed to the target audience then it’s a winner!
The fourth question I asked was “Do you think the interview appealed to E6 Radio
listeners? (College students)” for this question a lot of people came back with a
simple no. I sort of knew that this would be the answer to the question because
when I was listening back to my interview I realised that there were ways of the
interview I could have made the interview aimed at students but I didn’t want to
incase it lost the interest of my intended target audience. I don’t really know if
you would count this as a weakness but it’s something in myself I feel like I failed
on because I didn’t take the risk.

2. The fifth question on the survey was “Do you think using a new mum as the
interviewee was a good decision?” Once again I slightly knew the kind of answer I
would get to this question which was that it was a good idea. I think most people
saw that it was a good idea because I don’t really know who else I could have
interviewed. Maybe I could have made the interview more interesting if I also
interviewed somebody who was against public nursing so then it comes across as
the interview being un-biased.
The sixth question I asked was “Do you think the interview flowed well?” The
answer I got back from everybody was that it did. I think this was because of her
being a family friend and me feeling comfortable with her and vice versa that it
improved the interview. Personally I would have to disagree with the answer the
survey has given me because I feel like in places there was stuttering and you
could sense that the interviewee was choosing her words carefully. If I could do
this over I would try make the interviewee feel more comfortable so therefore she
could be more open about her views and experiences.
The final question I asked was the comment box question which is “What would
you change about the interview?” With the answer being completely up to the
individual and not being multiple choice I feel like people couldn’t really label
what they would change and that is why a lot skipped the question or just put
nothing. The few answers I received where people revealed what they would
change were all pretty much the same and it was that I should have included an
introduction. I knew this was a weak point in my interview and I feel it is what
makes the interview seem unprofessional but I didn’t really know what to say and
it wasn’t until I got to this paragraph that I thought of something. Adding an
introduction would be the biggest change I would make if I redid the recording
because I feel like my biggest weakness is that I stutter when I speaking by myself
and I know it is a long time till somebody else can jump on and speak with me.