This is a course to help you learn how to interview people effectively. Now I am going to reference interviewing people on video for several reasons. These days, it's so simple to record video, you can even just pull out of your pocket a cell phone and capture High Definition TV video quality, much better than what broadcast TV had 10 years ago. The other reason that I recommend video is if you forget what was said, You've got a video record of it if the person disputes what you said, You've got video of them actually saying it. And with video you can then convert to any format. If you're shooting the interview in video, you can put it on YouTube, corporate website, Vimeo, any other place, you can also pull just the audio out, turn it into an audio podcast.

It can be used for radio and then you can transcribe it if you're looking for some sort of a text article. And you've got a permanent record. So that's why I recommend conducting interviews in video. It also takes all the pressure off of you writing quickly if you're trying to take notes because I know I personally can't read my own handwriting. But I can understand what I say if I'm listening to a video of me talking. So that's why most of the reference points I give in this course are going to be about how to interview someone on video, even if you're not trying to be a TV star, even if the final product is a traditional 750 word news article on a newspaper website.

So if we could keep that in mind for the ground rules, let's hop right in