Some mandatory journalistic rules for interviews with writers

1. Never ask writers new questions, they may not know how to answer them. The safest questions are the ones they have already answered many times in published interviews. The Internet helps you not to fall into the easy temptation of novelty, to choose only frequently repeated questions.
2. If you do risk a new question, make it a question from private, intimate life, not from literature.
3. Don’t read any of the books you ask about. Otherwise what’s the point of the question, right? Just don’t take a self-interview!
4. Don’t go to the library (not even your own, if you have one). It takes up a lot of your time, and you are a busy journalist – and not with reading.
5. Great, great care with the title: lest it represent the author! The more you falsify the author with the headline, the better! You are creative. If the writer suggests another title, say that the bosses have already decided and there’s nothing more to be done.
6. Use only wikipedia for the presentation. What does it matter that the author has repeatedly distanced himself from some things there, you don’t have time to see whose side is right.
7. In the caption you necessarily mention the age of the writer, especially if it is a woman. If she’s over 35 (mezzo del cammin) you’ll make her happy from the start.
8. As many embarrassing personal remarks as possible! This isn’t Alice in Wonderland, when even children knew the rule: You should learn not to make personal remarks, Alice said with some severity; it’s very rude. In journalism things are the other way round. And if you don’t know such details, you can always make them up.
9. Don’t forget to use a combination of wooden language, clichés and words as “literary” as possible (preferably Sadovenian) in your screed.
10. Ask the interviewee to reply within three days, even if you know you will publish the interview in three months’ time. The writer is at the journalist’s disposal. Let him say thanks for your attention!
11.  Break everything the interviewee asked you not to do. Once the interview is published, there’s nothing more he can say.
12. Read the answers diagonally. After all, your responsibility is for the questions, and these, as I said, are already checked in other interviews.
13. No feedback! This is an essential rule. What’s the point of investing time and effort in thanks and impressions if you’ve done your job?

PS: I only dedicate these rules to pseudo-journalists. Fortunately there are real journalists who are a pleasure to talk to. I have thus just had consistent and stimulating discussions with very many of them.