Celebrity interviews

Cord Jefferson explains why, for most journalists, celebrity interviews are a bust:

Actors, politicians, and all kinds of self-important people often reach out to media outlets requesting coverage. It's only after you agree to provide that coverage that the caveats begin... [To get] honesty and openness from a celebrity you need more than 10 minutes, and you need to be Barbara Walters or Matt Lauer, TV news heavyweights who seem to specialize in weepy, tell-all chats with your favorite movie stars and politicians. That's the strangest thing about interviews with powerful and wealthy people: To get the best ones, you have to be powerful and wealthy, too.

This should go into the training kit for any aspiring journalist: We Were Offered 10 Minutes with Bono—Why We Didn't Care.