Some time ago I was interviewed via e-mail for an article and, as I often do, after providing answers to the nine questions, I asked the following: “Mind if I republish these answers in full on my blog after the piece goes live?”
It turned out that the journalist actually did mind. In fact, in the correspondence that followed, the journalist explicitly refused me permission to publish my own answers before changing her mind and saying I could — but without the accompanying questions she had supplied.
So who owns the interview? It’s a curious question of an age in which the balance of power between interviewer and interviewee has shifted. (Think of the footage of BBC documentary maker John Sweeney released by the Church of Scientology.)
Enough time has passed that I can write about this while preserving the journalist’s anonymity. However, the journalist has explicitly stated that I do not have permission to use anything that she has written, including our e-mail correspondence in which she gives her position on the issue.
This makes it very difficult to write, and it means I will have to paraphrase what has been said.
So here goes:
In response to my initial question — “Mind if I republish these answers in full on my blog after the piece goes live?” — the journalist responded that she would rather I didn’t; that she considered my answers part of the newsgathering rather than the finished story, and would prefer that I just link to that story.
Later, she sent me a link to the story. I responded:
“Thank you — are you going to publish the full Q&A transcript anywhere? Is there still a problem with me publishing it?”
The person reiterated that she felt that the notes did not constitute a standalone story and explicitly stated that I did not have her permission to publish the interview.
My response: “I agree it’s not a standalone story, but it is raw material which many people find useful. I’m interested in these issues around ‘ownership of the interview’ as a wider story which I’d like to run on Online Journalism Blog or Poynter and your contribution would be hugely useful.”
In her final response, she apologized for any confusion and said to feel free to write a new, original and different story with the answers to the interview questions. However, I did not have permission to use her questions. I also did not have permission to use anything the journalist had written, including e-mail discussions about the original interview.
Earlier this year, Brian Stelter of The New York Times e-mailed Web entrepreneur Jason Calacanis for his take on Twitter’s new “suggested users” feature. When the story was published, Calacanis posted the exchange on his blog. (A couple of years ago, Calacanis was involved in a dust-up with a Wired magazine editor over conducting an interview over e-mail. He posted that message, too.)
I e-mailed Stelter to see what he thought of Calacanis posting the e-mails. Here’s what he said: “As a journalist, having the transcripts of e-mails with a source be published isn’t necessarily the most comfortable part of the job, but I can’t object very strenuously, either. An interview is a give and take, after all, and the advent of the Internet has given interviewees an increasing amount of control. Dave Winer, I believe, calls it ‘sources going direct.'”
“I try to say nothing in an e-mail that I’m going to regret later. The episode with Jason — which I had forgotten about — has not changed how I function.”
I hope I paraphrased my situation fairly. The individual case is less important than the wider issue. Where do you stand on this? What factors are important in how you approach it? Who owns the interview?
