In this episode of How to Cover Money, co-hosts Micki Maynard and Mark Remillard look at a nerve-wracking subject for many young journalists: interviewing big-name business leaders. They offer some advice on how to lay out an interview strategy, how to make the most out of short and long interviews and how to ask the super tough questions CEOs may not want to answer. The episode includes tips on making connections to get your interviewee to relax and how to effectively end the interview.
Transcript
[Intro Music]
Micki Maynard: How to Cover Money: Thinking like a business reporter, even when you’re not one. Welcome to the Reynolds Center podcast. We’re coming to you from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. We’re based at the Walter Cronkite School of Journalism and Mass Communication at Arizona State University. I’m Micki Maynard, Director of the Reynolds Center, and with me is my co-host, Mark Remillard. He’s a Cronkite school alum and a reporter and anchor with KTAR News in Phoenix. Hi Mark!
Remillard: Hi Micki.
Maynard: Today we bring you. Series 1, Episode 7: Don’t get intimidated by big name business leaders.
Remillard: That’s right. Today we’re talking about a particular kind of interview, and the kind that takes place with those big name business leaders. These can be particularly intimidating. So Micki, how do you avoid freezing up and making sure you’re you’re getting what you need?
Maynard: Well, a CEO interview or an interview with someone with a big, famous name is scary for a lot of people. We see these people on TV all the time, or we read their names and company documents, or maybe court documents, and then when we’re confronted by them in real life, we get rattled. I mean, it’s especially hard for journalists because, you know, we don’t make a whole lot of money, and these are people making millions and in some cases billions of dollars, and you look at them and go, “Oh my God.” But the challenge in interviewing someone like this is they’re used to being interviewed, and they’re actually used to people freezing up. So you have to find a way to break through their spin, and you have to do it pretty fast.
Remillard: So what are the first things a reporter should do when they know they actually get the interview, they get the chance to meet with this big name person?
Maynard: You absolutely have to do your homework. And we’ve talked a lot about that on How to Cover Money, but when you’re talking about a CEO or someone in senior leadership of a company, you absolutely cannot wing it. You have to be up to speed on the company, and you even have to check the news headlines before you go into the interview, because you might have an interview lined up for nine o’clock in the morning, and by the time you get there, they’ve announced something that morning, and you might be the first person that they see, the first reporter they see after that news comes out. You have an opportunity for a little scoop, but you better know that you have an opportunity for a little scoop. So the second thing you need to do is have a game plan. What are you trying to get out of the interview? What do you think they’re trying to get out of the interview? Because, you know, like it or not, companies don’t give out CEO interviews because they like you and you think you’re a nice person, they see you as filling a purpose. And maybe you work for their hometown paper or their hometown radio station. Maybe you’re the station that they watch at home, or their their family watches at home. They already have their plan, because they have a staff of people to map out a plan. So you need to have your plan.
Remillard: Yeah, so how do you get organized for your plan and make sure you have your plan of attack set and ready to go when you walk in?
Maynard: It depends on how much time you have. So if it’s a phone interview, you have to make a list of the most important things you need, and you have to be kind of assertive. So one of the traditions in corporate journalism is that when earnings come out, quarterly earnings come out, they’ll give out interviews for about 5 or 10 minutes to the reporters who cover the company, and that’s all the time you get. You don’t get more more time because there’s nine people lined up behind you waiting to talk to the CEO. So if they start to give what sounds like a canned answer, you have to interrupt, politely, and get the interview back on track. And likewise, you better be listening to what the CEO has to say, because they might say something unusual. They might be off message, like for some reason, or they might decide to drop you a little scoop, you know, as a favor, or whatever they like your audience, and it’s up to you to listen and respond to that. So I guess I would say, have a list and have priorities, but don’t be so wedded to it that you can’t react if you hear something kind of interesting. And since you’ve done your homework, you will be up on what’s new about the company, what’s been said about the company, and you’re going to be able to control the situation.
Remillard: Actually, you mentioned the quarterly earnings. And another way that you might be able to get a little bit of a less canned answer is listening to those quarterly calls. They often take questions at the ends from investors, and those aren’t as scripted. And you can actually find some good, good bites and good, good pieces of information there.
Maynard: That’s absolutely true. And the interesting thing is that the world is now populated with some CEOs who are not as scripted as others. So I would recommend that anyone who’s interested in kind of a fun conference call every every quarter, listen to the Tesla call with Elon Musk, because Elon Musk is the least scripted CEO that I’ve ever heard in my life. And I’ll be listening to those earnings calls, and analysts will ask him questions, and he’ll go off on these tangents. And I’m thinking in Detroit that would never happen, because somebody would be reeling him back in, but because he’s Elon Musk and he’s Tony Stark, basically, he can say whatever he wants. So that’s the example of a CEO that you have to listen to, because he’s going to tell you stuff. And if you’re so focused on you know, the next question you’re not going to hear it.
Remillard: And the way to find those things, and the way how you find those conference calls is a lot of times NASDAQ will have a calendar of companies who are releasing their earnings this week or whatnot. So you can find the companies that you want to go and a lot of times they’ll have them archived online, or you can actually listen to them live on, when the actual call is being placed.
Maynard: Right, during the webcast. And one of the things I would recommend that people do is get on the calendar so you can get an email update, and sometimes even a text update when an event is coming up. And sometimes, for example, this last time, Tesla actually changed the time of their earnings call. And it was a little bit of a disadvantage for reporters on the east coast, but it was fine for those of us in Mountain Time and Pacific time, it was still daylight for us. And so that’ll keep you up to date. And actually, if a company changes the time of a call, like a day before the call, that usually means some kind of news is happening. So you can be prepared for news from either the earnings release or the conference call.
Remillard: So this is a good way to arm yourself with some background information, the latest on the headlines. And that way, if you if you’re going into a phone call or an interview with this big name CEO, and you only have 15 minutes, so you know you’re ready to fire on all cylinders, how do you organize this if you have some more time? Let’s say you really get a chance to sit down for, say, like, an hour or so and really get into some topics?
Maynard: Right. So an hour is a lot like a story in a way. You know, we’ve talked about David Kandow’s advice that you want to have a beginning, a middle and an end to a story. Well, you almost want to do the same thing for an interview if you have an hour. So what you want to do is in your head, and I’m not a big person on like actually writing down questions and flipping back and forth, because it makes them nervous. It kind of makes you nervous. You lose the place, you know. But you know, maybe little bullet points if you want to write on your hand, right on your hand. But essentially, the interview could be a little bit more free form. And there’s time at the beginning for, you know, some chit chat, you know. Oh, you have pretty fish over in the fish tank, you know, or something like that. Oh, I see that you went to Yale, my dad went to Yale. You know, that kind of chit chat that puts everybody at ease a little bit. And then you really need to have, again, a purpose for the interview. And you also need to listen, because the interview might end up somewhere that you didn’t intend when you walk in a room, but when you have a little more time, that can happen. And the other thing that I would recommend highly with an hour long interview is something called, “I Said What?,” which is a recording app that can go on your iPhone, and there are other recording apps, but don’t bring a recorder. I mean, obviously, if you’re a radio reporter, you need to, but if you’re just, if you’re a print or an online reporter, I would definitely tape it or record it, but I wouldn’t have bulky equipment, because I don’t know how many times in my career the batteries failed, and back when we used to use tape, the tape broke. And then you’re writing notes. And I find when I’m writing, writing, writing, I’m not listening, because writing always lags listening. So you want to have a notebook, and you want to have some way to record it. And obviously, as a broadcast reporter, you’ll have to be in control of your equipment, but as print journalists, said it and forget it.
Remillard: And I’ll also mention, as a radio reporter who uses my iPad for recording, put it on airplane mode.
Maynard: Really?
Remillard: Yeah, these cell signals and your WiFi signal and everything. If that’s all up and running, if you’re trying to use it, especially if you’re trying to use it for broadcast, let’s say which, is now becoming very, very plausible from a cell phone broadcast quality. But if you are and you don’t have that airplane mode on, you’ll get these little like beeps and hums and things like that, and it can really degrade your quality, actually. So that’s just one thing.
Maynard: I had no idea.
Remillard: Yeah, it’s one thing I’ve learned since I’ve made the switch over my iPad.
Maynard: Would it be a good good idea for print reporters or web reporters as well? Just stick it in airplane mode.
Remillard: Yeah, it’s a good idea. I think there’s two reasons why it’s a good idea. One, if your broadcast, obviously you don’t want to ruin the quality by having those beeps and hums, but usually, if you’re print, it’s not as critical, because you can still hear what they’re saying, and that’s really what’s important. But the other idea of putting it in airplane mode is that it’s almost like you’re going into an interview with a big name CEO, and you forgot to put your phone on silent, and it goes off in the middle of it and derails something. You know what I mean?
Maynard: It’s, yeah, it’s wrecks the flow.
Remillard: It’s almost a mental check to say, like, you know what? If I turn this thing off on airplane mode, I’m not going to be disturbed. Right now, I have an hour with this person, and I’m not going to let that be interrupted.
Maynard: Yeah. Well, the other thing I would recommend too, because, you know, we forget sometimes that print and online reporters, sometimes you’re going to use that audio. I mean, so, for example, if the CEO all of a sudden says, “You know what, I’ve been really depressed living here in Colorado. I missed the East Coast, and we haven’t announced this yet, but we will later today, I’ve decided to move back to Boston.” I don’t know why anybody would, but there might be a need for that audio. You know, you might need that to go up on your website in a sound cloud. So I would, I would recommend that even folks who don’t think they’re going to need the audio take that extra step to make sure that it is clean audio.
Remillard: Right. Having more than enough or a better fidelity is always a good thing, if you can, and it’s as simple as maybe turning off, you know, putting in an airplane mode. So, when you’re going into the interview, Micki, what’s a good way to kick things off? How
do you get started?
Maynard: Well, as I mentioned just a second ago, I think small talk is really important, and when you’ve done your research, you’ll find out some interesting little tidbits about them, like where they went to college. Or whether they held a first job that’s particularly interesting. So once in a while there’ll be a CEO who’ll give an interview, and he’ll say that, “my first job was bagging groceries at Safeway,” and you worked at Kroger bagging groceries. And you can say, “You know what? I know, you grew up in Kansas, and you said that your first job was bagging groceries at Safeway. Well, I grew up in Illinois, and I bagged at Kroger,” and they’ll probably laugh, you know. And that’s like the easiest thing to set the tone and to relax everybody. And obviously, if you know someone who knows them, go ahead and use that. So I interviewed at U.S. News and World Report for a job, very young. And Harold Evans, who is the legendary London editor who had just been brought in by the new owner to be editorial director, and no one knew him in the States, because this was a time when you know you weren’t as world famous as you are now in the media industry. So I looked and looked and looked and looked and looked and looked to see if I knew anybody who knew Harold Evans. And I found Walter Hayes, God bless him, at Ford Motor Company. And so Walter briefed me on Harold Evans. And so I go in for my interview, and I’m all confident. I’m like, sat down and said, “Oh well, Walter Hayes says, Hello.” And Harold Evans said, “Very nice. And who else?” And I said, “He was the only person I could find in Detroit who knew you.” He just laughed and he thought, you know, well done for at least finding someone that I knew. He knew what I was doing, but I got the job, so obviously it worked. So as I was saying, a little bit of a personal story or a personal connection is helpful, but there are some times when that doesn’t always work.
Remillard: There might be times when, as we mentioned earlier, you might be reading about CEOs and some of their troubles and reading about them in court reports or something like that. There’s not always good news surrounding these CEOs. So when, say, companies may be heading towards bankruptcy or something like that, how do you ask these tough questions when, especially if you’re in a room, in a situation where you might be feeling a little bit of that intimidation?
Maynard: Well, first of all, you’re not going to be able to deduct them. You do not want to go in and ask softballs, because you’re there on behalf of your audience. You’re not there as you, a person. You need to have your tough questions ready, and I would recommend, if you can, to bury it in the middle of the interview. You have warmed them up. You’ve earned their trust, and then reluctantly, you’re allowed to say, “I have to ask you this.” Don’t make it confrontational, if you can avoid that. But don’t be too soft on them either. Because you represent your readers and your listeners, you have to go back to your newsroom and explain to your editor you know what you’ve got, and your editor will very likely say, “Why didn’t you ask them about the bankruptcy rumors?” And then your audience, as we’ve said earlier, people are putting comments up. And if you write this softball story, somebody’s gonna say, “Hey, I own $100,000 of this company stock, and your story doesn’t tell me whether they’re gonna file for bankruptcy.” You know, so remember that in that case, you almost have to be an actor or an actress, and it might not be in your personal nature to ask super tough questions, but you have to just set that aside and do it.
Remillard: Yeah. Well, how do you sometimes you’ll sometimes you’ll bench a nerve, no doubt. How do you, how do you like to handle it when they get mad?
Maynard: Well, if they get mad, they get mad. I mean, they’re not mad at you. They’re probably just mad to be in that situation. And honestly, any good PR team has briefed them on what you’re likely to ask and if they still blow up at you, then he or she’s probably going to be blowing up at the PR team as well. So the phrase, “I understand why you feel that way will” often calm them down. And sometimes people are afraid that they ask a tough question, that the CEO will throw them out of the room. Usually the PR person won’t let that happen. And it’s really up to you to calm the whole thing down and bring it back to conversation and not a confrontation.
Remillard: And I think that if they do get mad, especially if you’re especially if you have broadcast or you’re doing radio or something. That can be really powerful, the fact that they got mad over it. Or this could be, like, the next step in this long line of issues that the CEO might be facing. And here’s the next one, is this guy blew up on this, you know? So it’s, you can actually, that could actually be maybe that one of the best parts of your interview, or most revealing parts of your interview.
Maynard: Right. And you know, PR teams and crisis management teams spend hours and hours with these people, getting them to not do that. And so the fact that they’re so scripted and so managed, if they actually do blow up, that’s going to be remembered. It’s not going to be remembered by you as a journalist, but it’ll be remembered by the audience. They lost their cool in the middle of this very, very dicey situation.
Remillard: Yeah, I think of when Scott Simon from NBR interviewed Bill Cosby.
Remillard: Right.
Remillard: And, I mean, he didn’t say anything. Yeah, he was mad and its radio and you can’t see his face, but the fact that he just clammed up, and you could tell, you could just feel it like how mad he was that that was very telling, you know, or at least it was one of the most powerful, you know, 30-40 seconds, and Scott Simon did exactly what you said. “I have to ask you this. It brings me no pleasure to ask you about this, but I need to.”
Maynard: Right. And we’ve had situations covering the auto industry, where executives have tried to avoid the press pack. So there was one time when General Motors was in really deep trouble back in the 90s, and the press pack trailed Robert Stumple through the kitchen of the place where he was giving the speech. And then there were other times where other automotive leaders basically shut down press conferences because people were asking questions that they didn’t like or didn’t want to answer, and they would say, “Oh, we’re just here to talk about this introduction of a new car.” You know, when their company was headed for a bailout. So you have to do your job. And I think that’s the most important thing to remember.
Remillard: What are some other tips you have for dealing with CEOs?
Maynard: Well, let’s go back, go to kind of a nicer situation. So a lot of times, the CEO will ask you for your opinion. So you’re asking them about their decision to offer vanilla yogurt when all they’ve ever offered is chocolate. They’ll say, “What do you think about so and so?” And it’s okay to answer, but you don’t want to be giving them any advice, because you have to stay on your side of the room. Another thing that I do sometimes is reverse the role. So, you know, I’m the lowly paid reporter, and I’m, you know, there, and they’re the billionaire, and once in a great while, I kind of let them wait on me. So I went to see Bill Ford, who’s the chairman of Ford when he was CEO of Ford. And we’re about the same age, roughly and so it’s more much more casual than it would be if this was an older, sort of gray haired CEO. And his he’s a coffee drinker. He’s an espresso drinker, to be more specific. And so apparently he drinks like eight to 10 espressos a day, or did at the time. And so he literally got up from the interview to make himself another espresso. And I said, “Oh, espresso.” And he said, “Can I make you one?” And I said, “Of course!” And so he made, and it was actually, I only drink decaf, and he made a leaded one. And I thought, “Okay, I’m sacrificing this for my audience.” But what I noticed was I was expecting it to come back and like, white china with maybe a little gold emblem on it, or something like that, and he had all this kind of mismatched stoneware in his office closet. And so, like, his cup was turquoise and mine was yellow. And I thought this is interesting, that he doesn’t even stick to, like, the formality of white china. He has whatever china he wants, and that was kind of a nice moment. And another tip that I would share is that if you have an interest in common, so you both root for the LA Dodgers, it’s okay to talk baseball for a minute or two. You might ask them if they the last game they went to, if they’ve met any of the players. And I got into a conversation once with Leo Acosta because I mentioned I had recently been to Cuba, and he said, “Well, I was in Cuba and I met Castro.” Well, you know, that’s a great thing to talk about. And I think I actually got, like, a little story out of just the fact that he’d been to Cuba, because way, way, way before the President recently loosened the restrictions on travel to Cuba.
Remillard: So when you’re in the interview, you’ve gotten, you know, you maybe you’ve had this long interview with an hour or so, but you’ve gotten your time to sit down, your beginning, your middle, the end, you’ve opened them up. You’ve asked them the questions and you need, when it’s coming down to the end, how do you how do you put it together?
Maynard: Yeah, so the best way to end is just to say, “Well, I’ve asked all my questions. Do you have anything that you’d like to add.” Which is, like the classic ending for a reporter, and a lot of times they do. They might have thought of something while you were asking questions and said, you know, “One thing I want to get back to, is blah, blah, blah.” And another trick that I use is say, “I think we’ve covered everything.” But I don’t turn off my reporting app. So I relax. They relax. The formal stuff is over, and sometimes I get this really great stuff because they’ve decided that, “Oh, we’re not in interview mode anymore.” But until someone says this is off the record, and you’re still in there and you’re representing your news organization, you are free to use anything that they say while you’re still in the room and while the recorder is still on,
Remillard: That’s it for this edition of How to Cover Money. Next time, we’ll look at a different animal, how you talk to small business owners.
Maynard: Support for How to Cover Money comes from the Donald W. Reynolds National Center for Business Journalism. Visit our website at businessjournalism.org, you can find us on Twitter @bizjournalism. That’s at B I Z journalism. You can also look us up on Facebook, LinkedIn, and Tumblr. For Mark Remillard, I’m Micki Maynard. Now, start thinking like a business reporter.
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