The recent roundabout discussion about the nature of the journalism interview has been interesting, but not very edifying. Briefly: Fred Vogelstein at Wired wanted to interview Jason Calacanis, who said, can we do this by email? Vogelstein declined to do it that way. Jeff Jarvis declared it was time to reinvent the journalistic interview. Jay Rosen recounted his frustrations at being interviewed at length by a reporter for New York Times, who then cherry-picked a single quote to illustrate his predetermined point – with which Jay disagreed.

Shorter version: thanks to the Internet, there’s plenty of ways to do an interview. And journalists are (take your pick) luddites, sticks-in-the-mud, or asses.

I concede both points. (Or, at least, that some journalists fall into each of the above categories.) But before we consign the traditional q-and-a to the ash-heap of history, we should weigh some of the pros and cons.

First off, there is simply no substitute for the give-and-take of an actual, verbal conversation in which words fly, in real time. Ever watch My Dinner with Andre? It’s a movie that consists entirely of a conversation, over dinner, between Wallace Shawn and Andre Gregory, apparently “playing” themselves. They range far and wide over questions of philosophy and art. It’s absolutely riveting, in part for its unexpectedness – you don’t know quite where Gregory (who takes on the role of the interviewee to Shawn’s curious questioner) is going to go next. (Yes – it’s scripted! But let’s not go down that rabbit hole.)

For a journalist trying to fully explore a topic, this kind of give-and-take is ideal. (Dinner and wine are optional, but can’t hurt.) Having a genuine conversation helps paint a complete picture of what the person you’re talking to really thinks. It can also show how they think. It can generate insights and unexpected digressions that help shape your own thinking on the topic at hand. The personal dimension is also revealing: does someone give straight answers? Does s/he keep to a “script”? In the broadest sense, is his/her thinking interesting?

A blog post or an email exchange won’t do all this. Just as a phone interview will convey less information than a face-to-face encounter, email eliminates some of the human dimension from an interview. And it all but eliminates the promise of spontaneity. It assumes there is a concise, single answer to each question, something that tends to cut off new lines of inquiry, not expand them. If someone already has a script, a message he’s trying to get across on the topic, it’s easy to be lazy, to cut-and-paste.

Of course, this doesn’t mean email or other forms of electronic communication are useless for interviews. Internet-based conversations can be complex and fascinating, such as the recent debate over the nature of faith between Andrew Sullivan and Sam Harris. If an emailer has time and the inclination, you can get a truly stimulating back-and-forth going. Inspiration that you might never get in a phone interview may strike at 2 a.m. and pop up in an IM.

It’s also important to note there are different kinds of journalistic interview. For a reporter trolling for quotes for a daily story (perhaps the most common type of interview, but not a true “interview” at all), email may be the most efficient way to get something. If you’re after a particular quote that illustrates your point, why force someone talk for a half hour, then ditch the 29.5 minutes you don’t want? Journalists cherry-pick quotes all the time. Sometimes they take stuff out of context. Sometimes that’s sloppy and stupid. Sometimes it crosses the line.

But the basis for the complaint may also just be that the journalist had a different perspective on the topic than the person he/she interviewed.

Sometimes people I’ve written about didn’t like the way they came off in the finished product. Is it because I was stupid, or didn’t get it? Maybe. But it might also be because I saw things differently than they did. Maybe I was true to their point, but I also undercut it somehow. When I was in college, I took a nonfiction writing seminar from John Hersey. The first day of class, he noted that a journalist has three responsibilities – to him/herself, to the audience, and to the subject. These responsibilities are rarely in perfect alignment.

Or, as Janet Malcolm wrote, journalism has the qualities of a confidence game; every story has an element of betrayal – because it’s the journalist’s story, not the subject’s. (Cf. Capote.)

The game has changed profoundly, because if anyone can publish on a blog or website, the exclusivity of the journalist’s control over/access to the publishing medium has been eliminated. That’s all to the good; if someone misrepresents you, you can respond and let people judge for themselves and respond. The conversation expands.

But journalists still provide access to a wider public. Calacanis writes, “I own my words.” That’s absurd. By definition, published words slip our grasp, whether they appear in a personal blog or a Wired story. By the same token, the notion that the conversation is all about control - that journalists cannot be trusted, and that if one contacts you, you should exercise the strictest form of message discipline (whether through email, interview-by-blog post, or sheer terseness) is a recipe for the worst thing in the communications world: boredom. “Message discipline” is one of the most insidious – and overrated – ideas of our time. Do we really want a public discourse that sounds like presidential debates?