Some tips from award-winning author Jeff Guinn on interviewing, research

(Writer's note: Award-winning author Jeff Guinn recently addressed our JOUR 5310 Media Ethics class at the Frank W. Mayborn Graduate Institute of Journalism at the University of North Texas. Here's a piece I worked up on that visit.)

Award-winning author Jeff Guinn does more than write good books. He readily hands out good advice to aspiring journalists.
Some of the best tips he offers involve interviewing. These are conversations, not interrogations, he says, adding that it’s his responsibility “to make [his subjects] feel comfortable.”
His isn’t an “in-the-face” approach but rather one of self-deprecation. It’s an approach that typically pays off.
“Everyone likes to have a conversation with someone they feel comfortable with,” he says.
His most recent work, a biography of California murderer Charles Manson, saw him gain interviews with several people who had previously refused media contact. Those interviews could be credited as likely making his work the most comprehensive to date on Manson, who remains incarcerated in prison.
Ironically, the one interview Guinn was unable to achieve was that of Manson, whose visitation rights had been revoked. The only contact between him and Guinn has been through letters, which have included threats from Manson.
While Guinn notes that Manson still has followers on the outside, the former investigative reporter seemingly shrugs off any danger as going with the territory of writing about the notorious killer.
The same idea of having a conversation is how Guinn suggests finding the first words for a new work. With all of the research done, imagine describing it to someone else.
“What would be the first thing I would tell a significant other?” he says.
Before penning his first words for his Manson book, Guinn estimates he conducted from 150 to 200 interviews and read from 80 to 100 books. He refers to his primary organizational tool for all of that material as a “timeline.”
Drawing from another author’s tip on how to set up and use a timeline, Guinn documents every piece of material in chronological order as soon as it is received. He says he’s found this is the best way to track everything and notes the timeline for the Manson materials came to about 400 pages.
As far as selecting a topic, Guinn picks a time in history about which he wants to know more and one that includes an iconographic figure. His research leads him to look at not only what happened, but why.
“Real history is almost always more interesting than the mythology,” he says.
That truth is what he also sought when working as an investigative reporter. Several of his newspaper series had major impact, including one on the plight of homeless people in Fort Worth.
“You write investigative pieces to bring information to the public and to public officials,” he says. “You don’t have the power to act but you do have the power to persuade.”
Journalists can become too comfortable in what they do and for Guinn one way to avoid that trap was to put himself into his subjects’ shoes and record first-hand the poignancies in their lives.
It was a way to help people and one where “I tried to make a little bit of difference,” he says, noting the world needs the truth along with its storytellers.