Q&A with author of Conversation: A History of a Declining Art

E-mail, Blackberries and text-messenging are all standard tools for journalists. Stephen Miller’s new book, Conversation: A History of a Declining Art discusses ideas and concerns about general conversation that may be of use to reporters doing interviews. In an interview with Kenneth Whyte for Maclean’s, Miller said: “I argue that face-to-face conversation is the ideal form of conversation because you have nuance, you have gesture, you have tone. Phone conversation is second-best, and electronic conversation is bad in general, because things go awry in emails.”