Stop Before You Set Up This Kind Of Call With A Journalist

Photo by Nick Fewings

Hi everyone

How are you all muddling through January?

So another week, another Zoom invite. I'm rather fortunate that I've pretty fallen through the online video call cracks and unless I'm running a Power Hour, there's really no need for me to be jumping on Zoom. Phew. I can carry on conducting interviews by phone. Like we did pre-coronavirus.

However, I'm noticing that instead of just organising a phone interview, many PRs and business owners want to dive straight in for a Zoom call, often flinging it in the diary before confirming with the journalist.

One word: don't. (Ok, maybe that was two.)

Unless perhaps it's a celebrity interview, or the journalist would usually conduct the interview in person, it feels rather unnecessary to set up a Zoom call. Just because Zoom is now kind of ubiquitous with the pandemic, doesn't mean we need to be turning on the camera for every chat we have. Even for very short interviews, where I'm interviewing say one person for an article featuring seven others, I'll have founders and PRs throwing a Zoom invite in the calendar. 

I'm not the only journalist aghast when this happens; many other hacks have recoiled in horror when they see the meeting code spring up in their email. A phone call means we don't need to worry about scrubbing up or our underwear being on display in the background; we can focus on the interview instead.

When interviewing a founder recently, she started the call saying that she was so relieved I'd switched the proposed Zoom interview to a phone call. "It meant I didn't need to get out of this hammock," she laughed, speaking to me from somewhere far more tropical than the UK. 

So set up a phone call if that's what you would have done pre-pandemic. But otherwise stick to calls or just ask the journalist for their preferred format. 
 

Have a lovely rest of the week.

Thanks

Susie