Asking questions is an essential part of being a journalist. It may look easy from the outside, but knowing how to ask the right questions in the right way requires a lot of studying and practice, otherwise you will fail to elicit the answers you need.

There are some basic principles that can be used to format an interview and encourage useful answers. Any provider, from Columbia to schoolofjournalism.co.uk, should help you master this art on your route to a journalism degree.

Preparation

Preparing for your interview will help you maintain control and moderate any nerves. You need to do your background research on the interviewee and the topic of discussion, and have a general idea of the questions you will ask, whilst still building in some flexibility in case things develop in unexpected ways.

The basic questions

Questions in journalism are often broken down into: “What?” “Why?” “When?” “Where?” “Who?” and “How?” These allow you to establish facts and context. They are open-ended, so they encourage detailed answers”, though sometimes, you may want to trap an interviewee in a more definite”yes ” or”no “.

Patience

Take your time. You may not receive the answer you want straight away, so listen carefully to the response and use that to shape your next question, or even to leave a moment of silence to encourage them to add to their answer.

Learning how to ask questions, and how to listen to the answers, is one of the most important things you can learn when studying journalism. It is important to practice.