E-mail vs. the Phone

Here's another thing I learned at the workshop last week: it's ok to e-mail your sources for interviews. I am behind the curve on this one -- always thinking that e-mail is perhaps the way to first touch base with someone, as well as a method for follow up questions, but it's not a real interview unless you actually have a phone conversation.

Now obviously for big interviews and big stories you need a phone conversation or even an in-person interview. . . but it was so nice to be told -- from some NYT reporters no less -- that they totally trust to e-mail if and when they can.

I kind of knew that my friends who write for women's magazines rely excessively on e-mail. This took me by surprise the first time I answered an e-mail query to be interviewed for a Glamour article and then realized that this wasn't just a pre-amble "do you have a story good enough for me" set of questions, but the whole shebang. I went straight from e-mail to Glamour e-mail fact-check.

Anyway, I wrote in big letters across my notebook: "Give yourself permission to do e-mail interviews!" And I was nothing but excited when I sent off a handful of e-mail questions to a few people on Friday regarding an article I'm writing for Ride magazine on how tourist revenue has increased at parks where they've lifted bans on jetskis. (I am interested, btw, in any and all other story suggestions about jetskis -- sorry, on personal watercraft -- that anyone might have. I'm truly desperate for a SCIENCE story on the subject. . . you know something where the researcher could get closer to the dolphins/coral reef/underwater volcano/sunken treasure because they were using jetskis. . . )

OK, but here's the problem -- apparently nobody else is on board with my whole e-mail interview plan. I have gotten no replies from these people. Do they not understand? Are they really going to make me CALL them?

I announce to the world: I have given myself permission to do e-mail interviews, now you have permission too. E-mail me back already!