ALEX LASSITER: Hello lovely people, it is Alex Lasseter with the Minnesota Daily and you are listening to In The Know, a podcast dedicated to the University of Minnesota. Today’s episode is a little bit different. 

I’ve got another guest in the studio with me today, and her name is also Alex, Alex DeYoe. She did an article earlier this month about mayoral candidate Emily Koski and her campaign. And so, it’s a little bit weird. We’re doing like a Q&A about a Q&A, but Alex, why don’t you introduce yourself and let people know just who you are, what you do around the office?

ALEXANDRA DEYOE: I’m Alexandra DeYoe, or Alex. I’m a third-year journalism student here at the U, and I mainly report for the City Desk, so I cover, usually legislative politics or city politics, city council. Sometimes I do stuff with policing or just like small businesses. A little bit of everything, just about the city around the University campus.

LASSITER: Super cool, so it’s like a kind of catch all. How long have you been doing that for? 

DEYOE: Oh my god, about a year and a couple of months now. 

LASSITER: Really? 

DEYOE: Yeah. 

LASSITER: Wow. 

DEYOE: Been here a while. 

LASSITER: What brought you here? I don’t know if I’ve ever asked you that since we’ve worked together.

DEYOE: No, I don’t think so. Well I, after my freshman year, I applied for the Daily in the summer. Got the intern, like, intern position. But yeah, I just want to be—I’m a journalism major—I want to write. And I wanted to get experience as soon as I could. 

So I thought, “Well, I’ll give it a shot, even though I’m just a freshman.” I had no writing experience. And for some reason, the editor was like, “You’ve written before?” I was like, “No, I haven’t, but thanks for hiring me anyway.” And I just stayed on for the longest time now. 

LASSITER: This Q&A with Koski that you did, was this like, how par for the course was this within your reporting? Was this something new, or had you done stuff like this before?

DEYOE: I’ve done a couple Q&As before. I actually, in the fall, I think it was around October, I did a Q&A about Reverend DeWayne Davis and his mayoral campaign. So it was kind of like my second go around with another mayoral candidate. So it’s like, I kind of already knew the field a little bit. So, it wasn’t a very hard story to cover.

LASSITER: What inspired you to do this one, you know? 

DEYOE: Honestly because no one at the desk yet had, like, talked to her yet. And even though she, I think she announced her campaign at the end of last semester. I think around, like, November, December-ish. And so I was like, “Well, it’s kind of, like, high time to talk to her about, like, why she’s running.” 

I mean, she’s a city council member, I think, for the past two years. So it’s like, I want to know, like, “Well, why transition from a city council member to a mayor candidate, even though you kind of work alongside the mayor currently,” like, it’s kind of interesting, so, yeah.

LASSITER: Yeah, it is a really interesting dynamic, isn’t it?

DEYOE: Yeah. 

LASSITER: I was curious to hear about the process behind that. How did you go about, OK, so you have this idea in mind. How did you go about reaching out to her and being like, or her team, even, and being like, “Hey, this is something I want to do, let’s make it happen.”

DEYOE: Yeah, well, it’s interesting with city council members because, for Emily, she has her, obviously, her campaign page, and she has an informational email that anyone can email her, but then she also has her assistants for the city council. 

So I contacted both of them to see which one would reach out to me first and it took actually a while for her assistants to get back to me. So I had like email them up multiple times be like, “Hi, please just talk to her for like 15 minutes.” 

LASSITER: Yeah, I know the feeling.

DEYOE: Right, and so that’s how it usually works. It’s like you have to contact their like policy aides or policy assistants, and she had two of them, and they thankfully got back to me, and then they forwarded me to her campaign manager, and that’s who I set up the interview with.

LASSITER: Gotcha, and so how did that process look? Was it just like, on the before side, or did it, like, did she just show up, or did you show up to her thing, or like, her office?

DEYOE: It was actually over the phone which I, for like Q&As, I don’t really prefer that. I like the in person stuff because usually the conversation gets a little bit more in depth. But she was on a tight schedule. I was on a tight schedule. The phone call worked.

But yeah, I mostly just interacted with her campaign manager and that’s who helped me set up the interview with her and she, I gave her my phone number. She called me and yeah, it was like Friday night and I called her and it was fine.

LASSITER: So what was it like actually talking to her? Like, how was that? How was that vibe? Was it like a little bit uncomfortable at first? Did you have time for a pre interview at all? Or did you just dive in straight to the questions right after she or you picked up the phone? 

DEYOE: I mean, with city council members, they’ve been interviewed before usually, so they kind of know what’s going on so usually I don’t have to to tell them about the process at all. I kind of just introduce myself, you know, “I’m a student, third year journalism student, I work for the Daily. I want to ask you about your mayoral campaign, like your priorities and stuff.” And I said, “Oh, do you have any questions for me? Nope. Okay.” 

We go right into the interview. And after like the first couple of questions, it becomes more conversational after a while, which is like the best position you can be in cause when it’s just back and forth question answer, it gets so repetitive and boring and you don’t really find out about the person, but no, she was really comfortable. She was really open. 

Yeah, I wasn’t really intimidated by that kind of interview, because it’s like, well, she knows what’s going on, and I know what’s going on, and it’s not like we’re talking about anything, like, super in depth or controversial. It’s just like, trying to get to know her, and stuff like that, and like, introduce her to the readers of the MN Daily and stuff, so.

LASSITER: How did you go into that interview separating, or finding a balance, rather, between her campaign and her campaign platform and her as a person. How did you really bring that to the forefront during your interview?

DEYOE: Well, when I do interviews about campaigns, I always want to start off with them as the person. So I asked, “Well, what motivated you to become a council member?” And, you know, I found out with some sleuthing, some googling, researching about her before I talked to her, that her father was actually part of the city council. And so she’s kind of grown up around this atmosphere of inner city politics, local politics, and yes, I tried to figure out her background, her history at Minneapolis. 

She’s from Minneapolis, so it was really easy to get to know her that way, because I live in Minneapolis also. And after that, just kind of like, “Well, talk to me about your campaign. What are your priorities? What are your goals? What kind of challenges do you think you’re going to face?” If you look at her, you know, city council member career, she kind of voted on par with like Mayor Frey’s thinking or his opinions. And then recently within the last year, she’s kind of strayed away from that a little bit. 

So I kind of asked her, “Well, why are you? is it because you were always kind of in the back of your mind plan to be mayor?” And, you know, she dived into that with me a little bit. And yeah, I don’t know. It’s just kind of, you have to build off the conversation as you go and it’s kind of hard to anticipate questions. So I try to be very vague when I’m writing my questions out before the interview. Cause like, you have to kind of be flexible and like, be resourceful with it. 

LASSITER: What were like, how did you go about like crafting the direction that you wanted the interview to take? How did you actually go out formulating that? 

DEYOE: Well, for all of my interviews, I always research the person I’m going to be talking to. Even if I can only research them like 10 minutes before the interview actually starts. Because sometimes I get referred to people as other interviews are going on. Like, “Oh, you just talked to this person.” It’s like, okay, well, darn, I have to start all over again. 

LASSITER: Now I’m spinning around on a dime.

DEYOE: Exactly, right? But no, I try to research about them. Try to look at, especially when it’s a politician. Try to look at like, past, like, bills they passed. Or like, initiatives they had. And of course, I talked to my editor, Jack O’Connor. He knows a lot about the city council and how it works, and he follows that type of political stuff all the time because he’s a poli-sci major also. And so I asked him, you know, “What do you expect from me? What kind of questions do you want me to ask her?” 

And when it comes to Q&As, I always have to send the list of questions that I have to Jack so that he can kind of approve them, quote unquote. But yeah, I just kind of try to find their background, and then I steer the conversation in that way, I guess. 

With mayoral Q&As, you always have to ask like the, “What’s your priorities? What challenges do you think? Why do you think there should be a new mayor?” That’s like the top three questions you have to ask. But then other ones I’m like, I can kind of pick and choose.

LASSITER: I’m curious to know if you learned anything during the interview that you didn’t know about beforehand. And if so, what that was?

DEYOE: That’s a good question. Honestly, this one didn’t really surprise me as much as to compared to other Q&A interviews that I’ve done. I’m really trying to think if she surprised me with anything.

LASSITER: Or even just like stuff that you already knew, but it’s like, “Oh, I didn’t know that detail.” Like that’s something I wasn’t quite fully versed on, I suppose. 

DEYOE: Actually one thing that did surprise me is I asked her, you know, “What kind of challenges do you expect to happen as you’re campaigning?” And she asked me to like expand on that question. I thought it was a very clear question of like, you know, for some people, when they run for mayor, they don’t have, like, the background you do. 

People know who you are. You’re a city council member for Ward 11 versus, you know, Dwayne Davis. He’s only been in the area since 2013.

He needs to get his name out there, basically. That’s his biggest challenge. So I presented that example to her, and I was like, “Well, maybe a challenge for you is, like, getting your coverage outside Ward 11.” Because Ward 11 people know you. But, you know, I, the University is in Ward Two. Do you think students know you that well compared to like Robin Wansley who’s Ward Two city council member?

Yeah, and she was like, “Oh, that’s a good point. Maybe that will be something that I’ll have to address later on as I’m going through my campaigns.” That kind of surprised me a little bit that like that question for her wasn’t really a consideration 

LASSITER: Yeah, and so, you know sitting down going through the whole process just step by step. What would you say was like the biggest difference between your very first mayoral candidate interview and this one? 

Were there any glaring, I mean you were obviously more storied, and you were more, you had like a little bit more experience the second time than the first, as anybody does, doing something for the second time compared to the first time. But what would you say are the biggest differences? 

DEYOE: I mean, I think the major difference with Emily Koski compared to other ones is that she’s already in city politics. She doesn’t have to, like, enter into it or, like, introduce herself to, like, the city of Minneapolis, whereas the other people kind of have to. She’s already well versed in inner city politics, and she knows the playing field pretty well, and she feels confident that she can run for mayor and possibly win to be mayor. 

That was kind of different, because it was, like, talking to someone who’s an expert already about Minneapolis, whereas other people are not. Not saying that they’re not experts, but it’s like they’re not experts in like the city council game. You know what I mean like, she knows kind of how it works in there for two years like she knows what’s going on.

LASSITER: That she knows the strats. 

DEYOE: Exactly. 

LASSITER: Yeah, okay, that makes sense. That makes sense. And so when it came to questions that you had asked her during the interview, obviously the story was edited for length and clarity. What questions did you ask during the interview that didn’t make it into the story? 

DEYOE: Honestly, I think most of the questions made it in. However, what you see of her responses isn’t her full response. I have to be very, like, selective, because I can’t make the story, like, a thousand words long even though she said a lot. I think one of the longest responses she had was what her priorities were. And I know people when they are explaining their goals in just context and just talking, they kind of go everywhere. 

And so she would start off with like, I know she mentioned like police reform and continuing that and making sure to hold police accountable. But at the end of her response, she also went back to that. So it’s like, “Well, which one do I add in?” So it’s kind of like I have to prioritize like, well, what’s the most important thing for readers to know about her? So when you read the story, there’s like three chunks of quotes under that question because that’s not it wasn’t all together. I had to like dissect it a little bit. 

You know, I mean, so that’s always hard. It’s like well, I don’t want to like erase something that she said that maybe she thinks is important But it’s like well, she’s not in the room with me while I’m writing the story, obviously. So it’s like I can’t have the creative freedom to dissect the interview how I wanted to.

LASSITER: That would be a little bit of a hamper to the process for both you and the politician to have them looking over your shoulder as you’re typing it out. 

DEYOE: Very intimidating, yeah. 

LASSITER: I’m glad they don’t make us do that. 

DEYOE: I’m very thankful also, yeah. 

LASSITER: So what would you say? I mean, you’ve gone through this process twice now, you’re probably going to go through it again. What would you say to someone who has never interviewed a politician before, was the easiest part of setting this story up, from conception, to reaching out to people, to actually getting the interview done, to writing it. What was the easiest part of this entire process? 

DEYOE: Honestly, with Q&As, it’s some of the easiest stories you can write because it’s just quotes. I don’t have to paraphrase anything. It’s fantastic. I don’t have to explain anything. I don’t have to problem solve or critical think about it. 

I just paste her quote and make sure that I remove the, ums, you knows and likes and whatever and make her sound a little bit better. The most intimidating part is actually doing the interview and making sure that my questions are clear and concise and that they make sense to her and that we’re on the same page. 

LASSITER: Yeah. Speaking as a podcasting interviewer, that is all of my job is to interview somebody and be like, “Okay, this is exactly what they said. This is going in the story. Super great. Super easy. Did they actually say it?” Because then if I don’t have the audio of them saying it becomes immediately so much harder. 

DEYOE: And it’s not like you can script them. You can’t tell them what to say. They have to say it kind of organically and you just have to hope that they say what you want them to say in a way.

LASSITER: And it’s like, there’ll be times during an interview where I just like clip that in my mind. I’m like, “Oh, that was a banger quote. I’m going to put that, I’m going to put that in the story.” And then it’s other times I’m listening back to the audio and I’m like, “What, how did I miss that? That’s such an awesome quote.” I wish I got them to expand on that more, but it’s like, it’s, it must be super. 

I remember doing Q&As back when I was on admin and it was really, really great just like having that, like you just get their stuff, you get their quotes and you put them right in the article. It hurts so bad when you see something that you wish you had them expand upon. And it’s so much harder.

DEYOE: Yeah. It happened with Emily Koski, actually. She mentioned something about addressing homelessness in Minneapolis. And I was like, “I should have asked a follow up question about that.” But I thought in the moment that it was, it sufficed. But it didn’t. 

I should have, like, had her elaborate on that. And even Jack was like, “Why didn’t you have her elaborate on that?” I was like, “Jack, don’t rub it in. You’re a big bully. Don’t rub it in. Stop.” So yeah. 

LASSITER: What would you say that your favorite part is about being on the interviewing side of people? Cause I know a lot of our listeners, probably they go off for job interviews a lot. What is your favorite part about being on the other side of the recording device? 

DEYOE: I honestly, I’m a very curious person, so I just love asking questions. And I love it when somebody says something, and I go, “Oh, I can, like, ask him a follow up question about that guy.” I come up with a question on the spot. That always feels so good because it’s like, they can tell that I’m really listening to them and trying to understand them. 

But it also feels really good when I ask, especially a politician, whether it’s, like, a city council member or a senate member or a house member, and I ask them a question, they go, “I never thought about that. That’s a good question.” Yes. I won. I won. So. 

LASSITER: Oh, that’s super awesome. Well, is there anything else that you’d like to share about your experience with this story? I mean, it’s pretty clear cut, straightforward. But like, it’s such an interesting perspective, getting to know about it from somebody who’s, you know, a Q&A about a Q&A.

DEYOE: Yeah. I don’t know what else to say. I think we covered a lot of it. Yeah, I don’t know, Q&A stories are always a breeze. They’re always just like, it’s kind of a nice break, because sometimes I do policing stories, like I reported on the DOJ agreement, and it’s like, “Oh my God, it’s a lot of jargony stuff.” But when Q&A’s it’s just so clean cut. It’s like a nice little vacation a little bit. 

LASSITER: It’s like for office workers that week where you only answer emails and you have no meetings. 

DEYOE: Exactly what it’s like. Yes. 

LASSITER: Thank you so much for your time, Alex. It was a pleasure having you on the podcast doing a Q&A about a Q&A. 

DEYOE: Of course, anytime. 

LASSITER: And for the rest of our listeners, I’m also Alex. This has been in the know. If you have any questions, comments, concerns, or recommendations for episodes you’d like to see this upcoming season, please feel free to send us an email at [email protected]. And we will see you in the next episode. Take care of y’all.