ESPN’s Wright Thompson offers advice on art of profile
Senior ESPN writer Wright Thompson spoke to students March 25 about his process and experiences writing profile stories about well-known celebrities and little-known newsmakers.
Thompson was a guest of professor of practice Tom French’s Behind the Prize class series, which brings top award winners and finalists to campus to talk about their careers and challenges.
Thompson talked about his interviews and profile stories, such as a profile of former NBA star Michael Jordan when the athlete turned 50, “Michael Jordan Has Not Left the Building,” for ESPN The Magazine two years ago. The articles was a finalist for a National Magazine Award in the feature writing category. He also won the Scripps Howard Ernie Pyle Award for Human Interest Writing in 2010.
French started the class by asking Thompson about the Jordan interview. Thompson explained his methods of interviewing celebrities such as Jordan.
“I just wasn’t worried about it. I wasn’t going to be shy in front of Michael Jordan,” Thompson said. “Michael Jordan is unbelievably smart. When he was there, he was ready to talk.”
For his story, Thompson spent nearly a week following and interviewing Jordan and his friends, recording nearly 14 hours’ worth of voice recorded footage.
In the interview, Thompson said he took the journalistic approach of prompting a specific topic, then listen to Jordan talk without intervening.
“Instead of interviewing him, I just watched him and prompted him to talk,” Thompson said.
Thompson talked about how to write good profile stories.
“The trick is to find someone going through something in their life that you are also thinking about, and that brings out the best questions,” he said. “All people feel basically the same thing in life.”
For every story, Thompson said his main source must encounter a life obstacle in order to make the profile story realistic, and this in turn will help him get in more depth in the interview.
“Think about the central struggle in the life and go find a character that you imagine is dealing with those things,” Thompson said.
Not all of Thompson’s profiles have covered celebrities, but he said this advice holds true with anyone.
“When it comes to writing profile stories, it all comes to finding the central complication of someone’s life and how do they go about life solving it,” Thompson said. “The central complication of Michael Jordan’s life is that he is not Michael Jordan.”
During the question and answer portion, students asked about his background and advice on following Thompson’s path. Before ESPN, Thompson was a sports reporter for the Kansas City Star and for the New Orleans Times-Picayune.
“You want people to believe you are people since most of society hates reporters,” Thompson said. “You have to not be everything a person would think you are when it comes to interviewing people.”
Thompson said that one of his traits as a journalist is that he is direct with people when doing interviews.
“I just don’t want to deal with the drama, so I am very upfront with people,” Thompson said. “Ultimately, I didn’t get to interview Barry Bonds because I was so blunt. I just don’t want there to be drama when it is over.”