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CONFESSIONAL INTERVIEWS: "My true story..."

Notes by Chris Horrie

This format is a great favourite especially of the popular women's magazines who pay a great deal of money for best sort of material.

The key to the format is a person "confessing" about some aspect of their private lives. It does NOT mean (necessarily) confessing in the sense of owning up to a crime or wrong-doing. It is just somebody relating their personal experience.

"Pegged" confessional pieces would involve a person talking about their personal experience of some great news event. Recently there were hundreds of pieces like this with people talking about how they survived the WTC attack; or how they reacted to the death of a loved one.

General "human interest" confessionals are not pegged to anything. Typically they involve health problems - the classics being "my battle wwith cancer" or "my battle with alcoholism" or marriage break up or some other trauma.

There's a typical example here from the American tabloid USA Today. There is nothing special about it. It is chosen because it is very typical. It is a woman describing how she was told she had cancer, then detailing the horrors of the treatment, her feelings, the reaction of her friends and family. We would call this "pure human interest". There's no news peg.

It is not clear from the example whether or not the victim has written the piece herself. Normally a "confessional" piece is "ghosted" - meaning that the subject has been interviewed by a journalist, sometimes at enormous length. The story is then written up by the journalist, but is put in the victim's voice. Sometimes the newspaper/magazine will add "as told to X" in the small type at the bottom. The tabloids like to use the phrase "opened her heart to". But the format only really works if the subject is speaking directly to the reader. There are no ethical problems with this, so long as the subject has seen the piece and agrees it is a fair summary of his/her story.

Confessional type journalism is thought to be even stronger if the person comes through their difficulties and is somehow better off as a result. These stories are generically known as "TRIUMPH OVER TRAGEDY" of "TOTs". Women's magazines in particular love these type of stories.

Obviously if a celeb is involved the material will appeal to TV watching audience (the tabloids, the down market women's weeklies).  Recent confessionals include Barrymore and Anne Robinson (Robinson particularly good because it is a CELEBRITY TOT - sales building material to die for!).

Although the "best" confessionals are now a matter of chequebook journalism (Max Clifford, eg, selling an exlcusive with the woman who had eight kids at one go to the highest bidder) and therefore beyond your resources as a student you can still do "confessionals" appropriate to less lucrative markets.

METHOD

Research a particular social issue or medical victims group (eg the homeless, racial attack victims; support groups victims of some particular illness or other). Internet USE GROUPS are especially useful for this. Otherwise use the phone book to get hold of the British Dandruff Sufferers Association (or whatever). They will normally have a list of sufferers who are willing to talk to the press (even students).

You then do the interview (you will have coaching on interview technique) wither for radio or for transcription into print. You then edit the sound material or write up the story and show it to them. Do NOT give "copy approval". You show it to them so they can point out any factual errors or to hear if they violently object to the way you've told their story. But YOU are writing the story and must take responsibility (which is to your readers/listeners - remember them? - and NOT to the person you are interviewing.

All magazine/radio formats have TV equivalents and in this case it is Kilroy; Trish; Springer; Oprah (the whole show, based around the TOT persona of the host) and the Ester Rantzen industry.

This format is very popular in the mass circulation press and so you are playing for high stakes and dealing with all the problems of chequebook journalism, hoaxers, mad people, people with Munchousen syndrome, etc, so you must be careful. Don't have people confessing to crimes for example. They are almost certainly lying. Some people will do anything to be "on the telly" or even have their picture in a newspaper or magazine.

It can also be used, however, as part of a "suite" of features pegged to a news story. So if there's a train crash there's the news about the crash itself, the news feature about train crashes over the years, graphic journalism with maps of the disaster area, and the confessional article from a survivor - all "packaged" together within a sophisticated newspaper layout or radio/TV segment.