I'm getting ready to begin interviews for the first class deadline and I'm realizing that I have no idea what I'm doing. Not only have I never used anything but pen and paper in an interview, but I've hardly ever watched audio slideshows on the Web. Naturally, I set out to find some examples. I wanted something more than just a video. I needed an example of narration, photos and interview clips as a guide.

I searched the St. Pete Times and Gainesville Sun without much luck. However, the New York Times had plenty of audio slideshows to choose from in almost every section of the site. I picked the slideshow on Mattel's recalls at random but found some useful information. While the narrator remained constant throughout the slideshow, clips of interviewees were placed throughout the story, in places where they would most logically make sense. It was very similar to a written news story in that way. The narrator's voice was distinguishable each time because it was always done with very clear audio, while the clips of the interviews all had background noise. While it can be hard to tell strangers' voices apart, that made it very easy to follow even without video. The only time it did get confusing was near the end, when two or three voices were talking to each other but were not identified.

This week I'll be interviewing two people about Bob Graham. Hopefully, I'll be able to blog later about the differences I saw in interviewing with the intent of capturing audio. As I said earlier, I'm completely inexperienced as of right now.