Interviewing interviewers: Collecting, analyzing and generalizing from occupational life histories of journalists

ABSTRACT

This article considers the implementation of the life history approach in the study of media professionals, based on an analysis of the occupational life histories of 77 active and former Israeli journalists. The article first discusses the decisions made throughout execution of the project. Next, it explores three key features of the dynamics of life history interviewing. Finally, the article examines the ways in which data gathered through life history interviews can be generalized.

KEYWORDS:

• Internationalization of communication research
• Israel
• journalism
• life history
• methodology

Notes

¹ This work was supported by the Israel Science Foundation (grant number 307/11). We thank the two anonymous reviewers for their helpful comments on earlier versions of this article. We thank Yael Oppenheim, Oshrat Sassoni Bar Lev, Sharon Ringel and Liron Aharonson for their research assistance.

² All interviewees’ names were masked to preserve their anonymity.

³ All translations from Hebrew were made by the authors.

⁴ For example, in his study of the life histories of French bakers, Bertaux (1981) notes that “we stopped at thirty: There was no point going further. We knew already what we wanted to know” (p. 37).