Village Squire, 1973-09, Page 20Keith's
Kolumn/
by Keith Roulston
On being interviewed
If you're a dentist used to looking
hour after hour into someone's mouth,
it must be strange when it comes time
for you to visit a dentist yourself and
have som-nre look into your mouth.
The same goes for barbers. And the
same goes for writers.
In six years of professional writing
your's truly has interviewed many a
person and pounded out hundreds of
thousands if not millions of words on
my old typewriter. It felt strange
then last month to be on the other end
of the operation.
Don Murray of the London Free Press
called up one day and asked if he could
do a story on Village Squire for the big
daily newspaper. I must say I felt a
little flattered just as many of the
people I've interviewed for various pub-
lications in the past few years must
have.
Driving over to meet Don I must
say I practically wrote the article for
hi.m about three times in my head.
The same thing happened when we sat
down to talk over a cup of coffee. The
problem with being interviewed when
you do a lot of interviewing yourself
is that you can almost answer the ques-
tions before they're asked. You get
to know just about exactly what will
be asked next.
I think it must be even harder from
the other end, however. I remember
the first interview I ever conducted
back in college when I interviewed
Jim Proudfoot, now the sports editor
of the Toronto Daily Star and then
one of the papers top sports reporters
on the nation's biggest newspaper.
The shy, rookie student -reporter
from Western Ontario talking to a busy
man who daily spoke to a million
readers. Man was I scared. Every
question had to be thought out seven
times before being asked because who
would want to say something stupid in
front of such an important person. He
was a wonderful guy however and soon
relaxed me.
Now Don wasn't interviewing some
awesomely important figure but it
must have made hien a little nervous
to know I was sitting there knowing
just what questions he was going to
ask. It may have made him work a
little harder to come up with a ques-
tion that would surprise me.
We had a good talk, though and the
story worked out well. He spelled
the name right and in journalism,
that's often all that really matters.
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20 VILLAGE SQUIRE/SEPTEMBER 1973