Having just finished my final story of my first year of J-school (YAY), I’ve been reflecting on how I managed to get through this year despite being almost cripplingly shy at times.
J-school, or at least the program at Ryerson, requires you to talk to complete strangers a lot. Sometimes you have to talk to them about intimate subjects (for example, in my first streeter assignment, I had to ask people where they were on 9/11). Sometimes you have to get information from them that they might not want to give, like their full name, employer, and phone number.
All of this can be extremely daunting for someone who suffers from social anxiety or even just regular shyness. Here are some tricks I picked up during my first year.
1. Enlist a friend. I became friends with a girl in my reporting class who is outgoing and has no problem whatsoever initiating conversations with strangers. She’s also very pretty and personable, so people respond well to her and open up to her quite readily. Many a time, we would go out and she would initiate interviews; I’d help with the interviewing and notetaking once the interaction was already underway, since that was the part that didn’t make me nervous.
Other times, she would talk to people on the street while I stayed in class arranging phone interviews and doing research, and then we’d share our notes when we met up again.
Before I knew anyone in my reporting class, I even asked a non-Ryerson friend to come with me on streeter adventures a couple of times (again, an outgoing, un-anxious friend). I’m lucky that I have buddies who are willing to do this for me!
2. Set up interviews in advance. I kind of hate on-the-spot interviews. People aren’t prepared for what you’re asking them, there’s no guarantee that they even have a clue what you’re talking about, and they can totally talk out of their ass instead of providing actual information. Sometimes a story calls for a random uninformed civilian’s perspective, but I prefer to get quotes from experts if possible.
I use search engines to find relevant people – psychiatrists, professors, CEOs, whatever the story calls for. I e-mail them first thing in the morning, as soon as I know what my story is about, even before I know what I might want to ask them. I let them know vaguely what I’m writing about, tell them when my deadline is, make sure they’re aware that the interview won’t last long, and wait for them to get back to me.
A rule of thumb that works for me: however many interviews you think you’ll need for your story, send out 3 times that many interview requests (or more). If I want to speak to one psychiatrist for my story, I e-mail five of them. If I want to talk to the owner of a bookstore, I e-mail the owners of every local bookstore I know of. Generally at least one will get back to me.
People are usually delighted to share their opinion, especially on a topic where they feel confident about their expertise. Just make sure you fact-check what they say because even experts talk out of their ass sometimes.
3. Harness the power of social media. My prof doesn’t allow us to interview family or friends, but I still put out a call on my various social media outlets when I’m looking for people to interview. I make sure to specify the topic and what kind of perspective I might be looking for. Sometimes a friend will say, “Hey, I know this person who might have some interesting things to say about that,” and they’ll set me up. Sometimes a friend will retweet my call for responses, and I’ll get a bunch of comments from people I don’t know. It’s great.
Another trick I learned, to circumvent the whole “don’t interview your friends or family” rule, is to interview the friends and family of someone else in the class (with their permission, of course). I get less nervous talking to a friend of a friend than I would a total stranger.
Also on the topic of social media: Canadian Press does allow you to quote Facebook pages, tweets, etc. if they’re relevant, and they’re often a good source. For example, I wrote a story about Toronto Public Health’s decree that a casino shouldn’t be built in the city, and I quoted a few people from the No Casino page on Facebook. People had some kind of nutty things to say and I didn’t have to ask their permission to quote them.
4. Develop industry connections. I write about sex toys a lot, so I have developed connections with people who work at sex toy companies. This is really helpful because they’re more likely to grant me a quick interview when I need one, now that they know who I am. And of course, it’s always less nervewracking to interview someone you already know.
5. Don’t take rejection personally. This is another reason I like to set up interviews via e-mail and social media: it’s somehow easier to handle someone saying “No, I don’t have time to talk to you” when it’s written down, as opposed to said out loud.
Seriously though, you’re going to get rejected and ignored a lot as a journalism student, and that’s okay. That’s why you send out a million e-mails to various different people: someone will say yes.
6. Engage in self-care when necessary. Deadlines are stressful. Talking to strangers is stressful. Trying to find the perfect way to word something is stressful. It’s okay to take a lunch break or a nap break or whatever you need.