Steven Silvers has an interesting post about the increasing frequency of email interviews by journalists.
I'm not quite sure this is journalism. It certainly isn't a journalistic interview. Even putting aside the argument that how executives handle being questioned adds to the story, there's still the issue of who is actually doing the talking. Is the email interviewee just the one executive? Or maybe it's a war room with the management team, lawyers and PR consultants collaborating over every calculated word before they hit the send button.
I tend to agree that interviews should be done in person, or on the phone, if possible. It's much more "dangerous" as made evident by last week's episode of The Office, but email is really a lousy form of communication for important issues.
But isn’t that more work for the journalist?