Actually, when I saw the title of your post I was going to suggest just that. Have them interview you and do a write-up as part of their application/interview process.

Just remember not to be too sensitive -- most people are a little squeamish about what interviewers pick to write about when it's personal....

If you're concerned about bogus interviews, you could always ask for contact details for the person being interviewed and then follow up the actual interview with a 'courtesy call'.

That would enable you to check that the person actually exists and that the interview took place, without needing to go through the lengthy process of conducting the interview.

Well, as my grandmother used to say: "vas you dere Charley"? (Something from and old radio show, I think...)

Conference-in on the interview, mute your phone.

Really, this happens? So, you pay somebody to interview Bill Gates, and they just have somebody pretending to be Bill Gates, talking off-the-cuff?

Guess they could pull it off easily if it's Joe Blow, not Bill Gates.

But, getting back to my grandmother's quaint expression - if you weren't there, you don't know. Same goes for articles. You really have no idea if they are genuine, unique, or correct. Unless you were there, you have nothing to go on but the person's reputation.

For what most webmasters want to pay for this sort of thing, well, I think there's a lot of wishful thinking going on.

Hire professionals known in the radio industry, and this will be much less of a problem - and a much greater expense.

Hire professionals known in the radio industry, and this will be much less of a problem - and a much greater expense.

Might I also suggest professionals from the print world of magazines and newspapers as well as the broadcast world of radio and tv.

If your candidate can provide you printed clippings or recordings of published interviews they've conducted, that'll give you a good idea of their style and ability.

Possibly their previous employer has -- hopefully -- checked to make sure they didn't invent their interviews.

Also, and your tech-savvy ezine writer should be able to handle this, you should be able to get them to upload you a copy of the interview recording in addition to the selected transcript that's going to be published. If you spend all your time on conference calls, that won't solve your time problem and that's no way to breed trust in your reporters.

And please do the followup courtesy call in a way to give credit to your interviewer in the eyes of the interviewee -- maybe "Hello, I'm the publisher of E-Xine Weekly and I want to thank you for giving an interview to our reporter, Mr. X. I didn't know (most interesting fact from the interview). I just wanted to let you know your interview will be published in our X issue." not "So, did our reporter call you last week?" If something's not right, the interviewed will let you know either way.

I've been hired in the past through people who got my contact details via an established online publisher - they simply called them up and asked for reliable people who might be interested in freelancing.

That way you can even pre-select journalists working in your specific field.