采访是当代新闻出版界的基本行为。华盛顿记者非常倚重采访,以致写的大多数报道根本不用什么文件资料。不过,采访是比较新近的一项发明。17世纪末叶美洲就有了报纸,但直到19世纪20年代,城市里的大报才开始聘用记者来搜集新闻。随着30年代有经营头脑小报的兴起,报道当地消息,正如1847年波士顿《先驱报》所说,成了“报界的特点之一”。可是,大多数报道最初也不过是 Interviews are the basic behavior of the contemporary press and publishing industry. The Washington reporter relied heavily on interviews, so that most of the reports he wrote had no documentation at all. However, the interview is a relatively recent invention. There were newspapers in the Americas at the end of the 17th century, but it was not until the 1920s that large newspapers in the city began hiring journalists to collect news. With the rise of business-minded tabloids in the 1930s, reporting on local news, as the 1847 Boston Herald said, became one of the characteristics of the newspapers. However, most of the reports were initially only