Notes from a Hired Pen: Why I avoid email interviews

Readers!

Thank you to all your kinds words last week. I really appreciate it. Defector put together a lovely remembrance of Dan that ran the day of his funeral. I was not surprised that I saw so many people from so many walks of life there. What a loss.

I’m in the anger part of all this [tonal shift] so it’s time to rant.

I have long pushed back against requests from sources and/or their handlers who want to answer questions via email. I don’t mean people who will do an interview in an instant messaging type situation to accommodate a disability or because English is their second language, but I mean when a PR person wants me to send them a list of questions that…someone will answer. Sometimes it’s fine, but often not, especially if I’m not “allowed” to email with the source directly. Most of the time, the PR person sends me back bland answers that have been filtered through God knows how many people, and I have no idea who really wrote them. There’s also rarely an opportunity to follow up, so that back and forth that happens during phone or video interviews is lost. That’s not even getting into how many PR people will promise to have me answers by a certain date and whoops they forgot or someone got busy or some other bullshit excuse.

I’ve pushed even harder against emailed interviews in the last few years since the worst people you know have been shoving AI down our throats. I’m being bombarded by pre-“written” statements about whatever a PR person feels worthy spamming me with, statements that are clearly the work of the lying plagiarism machine. These statements are boring, and I can’t trust that the statistics cited are correct or if the organizations they’re pulling those statistics from are even real because, again: lying plagiarism machine.

Normally, if someone says their client will only do an interview by email, I’ll pass and find someone else unless it’s a very specific person I need something from (or will otherwise have to write that they did not reply to request for comment). For my business reporting, there’s always another consultant or vendor who will happily speak to me.

But I made an exception recently for a story given to me on a tight deadline. My editor was fine with it, so, whatever, I’ll allow it this one time. It was, as expected, not great. The flack wanted me to credit the answers given me TO TWO DIFFERENT PEOPLE, and were clearly AI-generated. I sent them back to the PR person and said nope, that’s not going to work, even beyond that it’s not possible to attribute one quote to two people. I will never work with that PR person again (and if you’re reading this, well, you stepped in it and I think you know it).

I know this isn’t a common stance, especially with younger, digital-native journalists, but this is one instance where I’m going to go out on a limb and say they’re wrong. If you want to be a good journalist, you need to talk to people or else every quote you ever run will be flatter than my hair after wearing a winter hat to walk my dog in 4 degree weather. It also doesn’t allow conversations to go in surprising directions. I sometimes get my best leads or information or quotes that way. And defaulting to email hurts all of us. Once a source chastised me because another reporter at that outlet let her do an email interview. I told her, in so many words, I really don’t care.

Okay then! Now that I’ve got that off my chest, here are the regular recommendations, which are long because I didn’t do them for the last two weeks. It’s VERY cold where I’m at, and if it is where you are, you might find something to enjoy!

Recent Bylines

“Why does it take so long to hire technical talent?” HR Dive

 

What I’m Reading

• Assume the Worst: The Graduation Speech You’ll Never Hear by Carl Hiassen with illustrations by Roz Chast. This is a silly little book, but blunter than most graduation-themed ones. I’d buy it for someone. But even if you don’t want to read it, I’ll share this bit that I liked: “Here’s all I know about happiness: It’s slippery. It’s unpredictable. It’s a different sensation for everyone.”
• Hitler’s Pope: The Secret History of Pius XII by John Cornwell, read by Michael Page. Perfect example of how one book leads to a cascade of reading: I listened to Mengele: Unmasking the Angel of Death by David G. Marwell, which because he escaped to South America to lead me to The Real Odessa: How Nazi War Criminals Escaped Europe by Uki Goni. And because so many fled via Italy, that lead me to ask hey what was up with the Pope at the time? Nothing good! This book is about Pope Pius XII, focusing on his signing of the Reichskonkordat, a 1933 treaty between the Vatican and the Nazi government. If not signed, Cornwell writes, there might have been a stronger Catholic resistance to Nazism. But instead, appeasement neutered the movement and put the Catholic Church on the Nazi side through its silence. Terrible stuff (and more came out after the book’s 1999 publication, which you can read about in both Mengele and The Real Odessa). I know I’m just an amateur scholar of fascism, but one thing that feels different about this moment right now is how many people are fighting back. One of those people: Pope Leo.
• The Amalfi Curse by Sarah Penner. I picked this up because, sure, Amalfi, but didn’t realize Penner was the author, who I was so so after reading The Lost Apothecary. This is another time jumper, telling the story of a coven of streghe (witches) who protect Positano, focusing on one strega who wants to leave, and a nautical archeologist in the present day trying to find sunken treasure. I had the same problem here as I did with The Lost Apothecary. The current timeline wasn’t very interesting. She also included a journal and letters written by men, and who cares about them? Yes I’m being a little flip, but if the story is about powerful women, why include their voices in that way? Too muddy to recommend. Also, the ship at the center of the is The Aquila, and my eyelid kept twitching because in Italian it’s L’Aquila, which is also court I know for [redacted reason].
• An Elderly Lady Must Not Be Crossed by Helen Tursten, translated by Marlaine Delargy, read by Ann Richardson. Our 88-year-old menace of an Swedish woman is back! After the unfortunate incident in An Elderly Lady is Up to No Good (which I will not spoil for you), Maud goes on a group trip to Africa. It’s made up of flashbacks that give us an idea of why Maud is the way she is, and stories from that trip that shows maybe she’s not so terrible after all.
• 52 Ways to Walk: The Surprising Science of Walking for Wellness and Joy, One Week at a Time by Annabel Streets. This a quick non-fiction book about 52 different ways to go on a walk (one for each week in the year). As someone who walks a lot, I found it was mostly interesting despite stretching a bit in both studies (a lot of stuff only seen in mice or rats) and topics (to make 52 entries). But I got irked that she hates running so much to the point of printing that old adage that running ruins your joints. You’d think with 30 pages of citations, she might have considered looking at studies about running and learned that it does no such thing and instead strengthens them. Even in places where she notes that running is better than walking for some specific thing, she has to then go and site some other physical activity is better that is not running. As many of you know, I wrote about running for years. I never once said that running is the supreme physical activity above all else, because people have different preferences and capabilities. Running isn’t the best activity for everyone. No physical activity is.

 

What I’m Watching

• Blithe Spirit. A writer (Dan Stevens) is struggling with writer’s block so decides to seek out a medium (Judi Dench) who accidentally brings back his ex-wife (Leslie Mann). The problem? He’s now married to someone else (Isla Fisher). This is a silly little romp through 1937 Hollywood, as you’d expect from a Noel Coward adaptation. And it’s silly on purpose, of course. Also the breakfast room in the main house had me gasping. It’s so good (and not just because my office is the exact same color). Stevens seems much happier playing weirdos like this than he ever did doing Cousin Matthew on Downton Abbey. Good for him for making the leap. If you haven’t seen Eurovision Song Contest: The Story of Fire Saga, he just about steals the movie.
• Plane. A New Year’s Day flight goes down somewhere in the Philippines after a lightening strike — a flight that just happens to be captained by a former RAF pilot (Gerard Butler) and carrying an accused murdered being transported by the FBI (Mike Colter). Will they work together to get the passengers to safety?!?!? What do you think? This is pretty gory but I also watched it while doing something else so I didn’t see much of it. Yes, these kinds of movies are sometimes the background for me while I work. When they’re free to take out of the library why not?
• Hotel Portofino (season 1). Rich Brits open a hotel in Italy in the 1920s. What could possibly go wrong? Everything! It’s a melodrama full of love won and lost and arranged marriages and secret lovers (gay and straight), all set in front of the drum beat of the rise of Mussolini and the fascist party. It’s all DRAMAAAAA but sure is beautiful despite how much these areas of Italy have changed. I’ve been to Portofino, which is very commercialized with multiple luxury boutiques (and a K-Way thank goodness because I bought a cross body bag big enough to hold a water bottle and book there). When one of the characters goes to Genoa, they artfully filmed pieces of second story architecture (including of the cathedral dedicated my patron saint of chefs because he was cooked on a grill) so they didn’t have to shut down busy streets, which I thought was neat and also funny. It also reminded me of conversations I had this summer with Italians who told me that the worst tourists are the English “because they think they still owe everything,” one tour guide told me. That sentiment runs through this too.
• Nobody 2. More smash smash bang bang! Except this time with Colin Hanks and Sharon Stone added to the cast. It’s the same kind of bloody action movie, but with a bigger budget and more star power. It’s fine! Totally fine. I knew more about the sequel than I did the original, probably because the first movie was caught in that peak COVID no man’s land for movies. But I’m glad I watched them both.
• Murder Before Evensong. When Acorn announced this original series, I thought it was a parody. A vicar? Solving crime? Before EVENSONG?! But it’s a real show, and unlike most British murder mysteries, is one story instead of a murder of the week, with Matthew Lewis playing said vicar. It’s also set in the 1980s, which is different as so many of these shows tend to focus on the post WW II era, which, given what the country went through, makes a sort of sense. But this show still deals with the fallout of the war, showing again that the trauma of war doesn’t go away.
• From Time to Time. A young boy waiting for his father to return from a German POW camp in the last days of WW II realizes that he can move back and forth in time, peering into — and at times interacting with — past inhabitants of the family home. Quite a cast: Maggie Smith, Timothy Spall, Dominic West and Hugh Bonneville all star. I can’t say it’s a major heart tugging story (see the next movie for that), but it’s perfectly fine to put on while doing busy work.
• Gold. I was looking for something else when I stumbled upon this 2014 Irish drama on Kanopy, staring a young Maisie Williams. It’s about family limping along when someone comes back to town. There’s also a lot of very funny bits about running and proto-fitness influencers. It’s not sinister, and very funny at times, and touching in a way that most Irish dramas about family are.
• The Muppet Show Special Event. Disney and Seth Rogan are taking a stab at reviving The Muppet Show, with this half our special serving as a sort of public pilot (which they joke about on the show). I think it was a success, enough to hopefully get a full season. Sabrina Carpenter is perfect as a Muppet. And as they also joke in the show, she’s about their height.
• All Creatures Great & Small (season 1). You’d think that given how much I watch British TV, I’d have watched one of the most if not most popular Masterpiece Theater show on PBS today. And yet! I had somehow skipped over this adaptation of a beloved series of British novels, and also a series in the 1970s, about a group of veterinarians in Yorkshire starting in 1937. It’s an warm and kind show, much like Call the Midwife in a case of the week instead of murder of the week. Sometimes the right show comes to you at exactly the right time (or: a library DVD stands out), and I’d like to think I didn’t watch this before because I needed it more now. And Yorkshire looks gorgeous. I’ve already set my itinerary for my upcoming England/France trip, but boy it’s tempting to change it after watching this.
• Fackham Hall. A spoof of both Downtown Abby and British “the killer is in this house, nobody leaves!” type mysteries. It’s more Airplane than Step Brothers, which makes sense since it’s a Jimmy Carr project. I don’t know if many Americans know that Damian Lewis has done comedy. Good part for him. Also I feel like a dummy that I didn’t get the title until someone said it out loud. Duh Jen.

 

Nail Polish of the Week

Save a Cowboy by Essie, which is the exact color of hot chocolate. For Disney, I wore Bikini So Teeny by Essie, a bright baby blue with a slight shimmer, which lead to this photo.

 

Until next time!

Jen A. Miller (she/her)

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