While I have never been part of my school's broadcast groups, I have applied these types of skills when conducting my own interviews. These skills have helped me be a better reporter and also learn to get better interviews.

          Before doing an interview, I always make sure that I know who it is I'm interviewing beforehand. This isn't so much the case for "off-the-street" student opinions, but when considering your sourcing it is always a good idea to have a background on who your person is, what they did, and why it is important. Obviously you want those answers from them, but having an idea beforehand can guide questioning.

          A lot of times I do interviews with students who are around my own age. If I am distracted while conducting the interview, they will notice immediately. To help with this, I like to record my interviews and start out with a little bit of an introduction of who I am so that the feel more comfortable. When people feel comfortable, they are more likely to give you content to work with and open to follow-up interviews.

          Covering the who, what, where, when, why, and how of a story is always a good way to start your questioning when conducting and interview, but we also have to remember that when we box ourselves in, we don't leave room for potentially an even better story than you originally planned. While I like to come up with some of these questions before hand, I like to keep them open ended or specify "why" so that there is more room to improvise on their part. I also like to ask if there are any last thought they would like to add and if not now then to shoot me an email later on.