On the first weekend of the European Football championships, Dion Fanning and Paul Kimmage, joined Joe Molloy in France, to review the English and French sports pages today.
Paul Kimmage conducted an extensive interview with Ireland manager Martin O'Neill in a questions and answers format, which appears in today's Sunday Independent. This is a style of writing that Kimmage uses regularly in his pieces.
In explaining the different dynamic that Q&A articles can offer to readers, he says:
"L'EQUIPE used to always do this double page of a Q&A and I've always loved that format. It's huge in the States and in places like Rolling State. There's a real snobbery out there (about Q&A). The only people I've ever heard giving out about the Q&A are journalists."
"The reader doesn't want to hear what Paul Kimmage has to say, they want to know what the interviewee is saying. With the Q&A, you get the absolute maximum bang for your buck, you're hearing exactly what they're saying. It gives you the best platform to get the maximum from your subject."
He also added that despite the misconceptions about the Q&A, the questions and answers do not appear in chronological order in his works. He threads it all together to establish a narrative.
In relation to today's Martin O'Neill interview, Kimmage said he spent two weeks composing the piece. And it was during a walk in Versailles yesterday, that he realised that he had not thought about Martin O'Neill for the first time in two weeks.
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