I don’t think my ratio of good interviews to bad interviews has changed. In my estimation, about one in four interviews I do is a good one. Of late, I’ve interviewed a lot of boring people. Most people, most porners, are simply not interesting, though I find porners about the most interesting of any group. They are far more interesting than politicians and athletes. I remember interviewing Senator Alan Cranston and others between 1985-87. I also covered the San Francisco 49ers and the Sacramento Kings for KAHI/KHYL radio news.
Regarding my dull interviews of late: Please show me other interviews with these same people that are more interesting. I doubt you’ll find any. I don’t think the problem is with the interviewer. It’s with the interviewee. Most people are boring.
Regarding interviewing technique: Asking confrontational questions rarely results in interesting answers. Putting a value statement in your question doesn’t work. It may make the interviewer (Mike Wallace etc) look like a tough guy but it does nothing for the person reading/watching the interview. There’s a protocol to interviewing just as there is to taking a medical history.
Nine out of ten of my posts/interviews have little meaning, but I have to keep pumping them up there to maintain my audience, massage my sources, etc, to get that one out of ten story that pops. That’s the nature of the beast. This is my living. If money was not a concern, I would not be writing on porn.