“I only do email responses to print interviews
Because these people love to
put a twist to your words
To infer that you said
something fucking absurd”
—lyrics from Fort Minor’s “Get Me Gone”
Mike Shinoda (TW: @MIKESHINODA, MIKESHINODA.COM) is best known as the rapper, principal songwriter, keyboardist, rhythm guitarist, and one of the two vocalists (yes, all that) of Linkin Park, which has sold more than 60 million albums worldwide and earned two Grammy awards in the process. Mike has collaborated with everyone from Jay Z to Depeche Mode, and he’s also the lead rapper in his side project, Fort Minor. As if that’s not enough, he’s also provided artwork, production, and mixing for all the projects mentioned above. I first met Mike when I interviewed him for BlogWorld & New Media Expo in 2008.
Spirit animal: Snow leopard
I’m a big fan of Fort Minor, and the lyrics on the previous page take on special meaning once you’ve been bitten. Nearly everyone in this book has been misquoted in media. It’s usually the product of a phone interview, and the fallout can be disastrous. To the interviewer, it’s just another piece that’ll hopefully get clicks and shares. For you, it could be a confusing mess that haunts your Wikipedia forever.
Mike elaborated in our conversation: “I don’t feel like the people are necessarily being deceitful. It’s just realizing that everybody’s got their own agenda. Even a music magazine is not interviewing you because they love music, right? Their day to day is ‘We need ad dollars, we need click-through….’ If you have a 40-word sentence that chops down to 7, [and] it’s really titillating, [it doesn’t matter if] it has nothing to do with anything you said in your interview. It’s just clickbait, [but] they’ll absolutely go for that because that’s what their business is built on.”
TF: The moral of the story is, whenever possible, do print/text interviews via email. A paper trail will give you evidence and recourse if people misbehave. But what if you can’t keep it to the inbox? What if you can’t (or don’t want to) dodge phone calls? My approach has evolved over the years, but it now checks two boxes: avoiding the pain of wasted time, and not getting misquoted or misrepresented.
The pain is blocking out 1 to 3 hours for a print piece interview, but ending up with a single sentence as a quote. The remaining 99% of the Q&A never sees the light of day. Even if the journalist records the call (a step in the right direction), I’ve never been able to use their audio, as they have a boss who has a boss who has a boss. This situation burns time and makes me sad. So how to fix?
Easy, you record it on your side—which doubles as a way to cover your ass and combat any malicious intent—by saying, “Great to connect! What I usually do for phoners is record it on my side as a backup [via Skype using Ecamm Call Recorder; Zencastr also works well] and then email you a Dropbox link afterward. I assume that’s cool?” If they agree, then you’re not breaking the law by recording, and everything is hunky-dory. If they don’t agree, that’s a red flag and you should abort. Missing any one media opportunity won’t kill you, but a terrible misquote can persist like an incurable disease.
These days, I typically broach the “I might want to put the full audio on my podcast after your piece runs, which I’ve done before. I assume that’s cool?” before I agree to interviews. Trading 2 hours (don’t forget email follow-ups, fact-checking, etc.) for a potential one-line mention in any text piece isn’t otherwise worth it. But when the trade works … it can be beautiful. One of my most popular “inbetweenisodes” for the podcast was with journalist and hilarious satire writer Joel Stein of Time (TW: @thejoelstein), who killed. It was great for both of us.
It’s always smart, before starting any collaboration, to ask yourself, “What are their incentives and the timelines of their incentives? How do they measure ‘success’? Are we aligned?” Don’t make short-term all-or-nothing bets on gimmicks, if you’re playing the long game. There will often be pressure from people who are thinking about a promotion next quarter, not your career in 1 to 10 years. Mike shared a story about advice Linkin Park got from their label in the very beginning:
“And they tell us things like, ‘Well, you guys need a gimmick. We want to dress Joe in a lab coat and a cowboy hat. And Chester, you should kick a shoe off at every show.’ It was stupid record-company stuff that sounds like something out of a movie like This Is Spinal Tap. But it was absolutely true, and these were real suggestions. I imagine that if you [reminded them now] they’d say, ‘Oh, no, I was totally joking.’ I assure you they were not joking.”
The band agreed amongst themselves to stick to their guns, and they offered their label two choices: shelve us, or let us do what we know how to do. It worked. I’ve “missed” many great financial opportunities predicated on gimmicks. As Thomas Huxley famously said, “It is far better for a man to go wrong in freedom than to go right in chains.” If you’re good, you’ll have more than one chance.
• Little-known fact
We’re both huge fans of Hayao Miyazaki animated films. In fact, Princess Mononoke was one of the main inspirations behind Linkin Park’s video for “In the End.” And since you asked, my favorite museum in the world is the Ghibli Museum in Tokyo, created in the “Mitaka Forest” by Miyazaki.
• Lesser-known bands Mike introduced me to
Royal Blood: I like “Figure It Out” and use it for writing.
Doomriders: “Come Alive” is for headbangers and reminiscent of Danzig. Best suited for workouts or piñata-smashing.
• Both Mike and Justin Boreta of The Glitch Mob (here) use Ableton Live for editing
Boreta uses Universal Audio plug-ins to emulate all of the outboard gear that you could buy. Ira Glass of This American Life also uses Ableton for live performances.
• Who do you think of when you hear the word “successful”?
Mike thought of Rick Rubin (here), not only for songwriting and producing, but also for life lessons.