Wednesday, June 11, 2008

feedback questions

One of my little features department tasks in our weekly magazine is the collecting and positioning of the week's feedback replies. Basically, I (with help from coworkers) think of inane, but innocuous, questions to send the reporters for their humiliation -- or so they think -- forcing them out into the world to interact with (one would hope) our readers, overseas. They grab passersby and ask the questions, take down the answers, take a head shot of the person, and send these goodies back to me.

Granted, they're generally quite lame, along the lines of, "What's your favorite hobby?" or, "if you had one million dollars to give away, what worthy organization would you choose?" I know ... zzzzz. Sometimes we make it relevant for an upcoming holiday and ask something like, "What was your favorite Halloween costume as a child?"

I'm about to compile a new list of questions, so I sent out an e-plea to the bureaus to help me come up with stuff. Part of the idea is, hey, reporters! If you dislike the questions so much, help us think of better ones!

One of the reporters sent back some ideas that had me bursting with laughter this morning. I don't want to type them here, rendering them Googlable, but if you're interested, let me know and I'd be happy to pass along the list. I found it quite hilarious. Unusable, but hilarious.

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