Mark Dykeman, who writes a blog called Broadcasting Brain, did a Q&A interview with me recently as part of a series he has been doing, and you can find it here if you’re interested. Other participants in Mark’s series have included Dave “DigiDave” Cohn of NewAssignment and Tamar Weinberg, who writes for Lifehacker and Mashable.

The latest issue of Fortune magazine has an interview with Craigslist CEO Jim Buckmaster — who may qualify as the world’s tallest free-standing chief executive, at six foot eight inches — in which the writer asks Jim some questions provided by readers, and then asks some of his own. The answers are very similar to the ones that the Craigslist CEO gave to Mark Evans when he did a keynote interview with Buckmaster during mesh (there’s video of their chat here, thanks to mDialogue and Mark McKay).

One of the interesting things for me, because I’m nosy (occupational hazard, I’m afraid) came at the end of the interview, when Jim mentioned where he and his partner Susan Best like to go to relax: an organic farm called Emandal in Mendocino County. I figured it must be some kind of swanky resort with a gourmet chef, but I should have known better, given Buckmaster’s disinterest in such trappings of wealth.

As it turns out, Emandal is a tiny, unassuming family farm on a back-country road in the middle of nowhere and reportedly includes an ostrich named Huey. As it happens, one of the top results in Google for the term “Emandal” is a collection of photos from Smugmug of Jim and Susan enjoying their time at the farm (including a visit with Huey). Nice to see that Jim doesn’t just talk about not being interested in money — he acts like it too.

Gabe Rivera — creator of Techmeme, the site bloggers love and/or hate (depending on whether they are on it or not — keeps his cards pretty close to his chest when it comes to the site and how it functions. And he doesn’t exactly spill the beans in a surprise interview with Beet.tv. But it’s still interesting to see and hear him discuss how it works. He also hints about doing some hiring, and possibly launching some new Techmeme spinoffs.

Aaron Swartz is a pretty smart guy — after all, he co-authored the RSS 1.0 standard for feeds when he was just 14 years old, and while still in his teens was working with Lawrence Lessig on some of the plumbing behind the Creative Commons initiative. He has also edited thousands of Wikipedia articles, and was a co-founder of Reddit, the Digg-style social news engine that was recently bought by Conde Nast.

Phil Lenssen of Google Blogoscoped has posted a lengthy interview he did with Aaron via instant messaging, in which the 21-year-old talks about working at Conde Nast (he says he was asked to leave — and has made it clear he didn’t like working there, in blog posts such as the one I wrote about here), as well as his reaction to job offers from Google, his thoughts about Wikipedia and his views on sexism in the tech community. An interesting read. Aaron isn’t too clear about what he’s doing now, but I wouldn’t be surprised if it was something pretty interesting.

Another flash fire seems to have flared up in the blogosphere over interviews with reporters: Jason Calacanis says he won’t do an interview with Wired unless they can do it by email, and says this is ironic (in an Alanis Morrisette kind of way, I’m assuming). Dave Winer says he likes to do interviews via his blog because it’s too easy to be misquoted.

Mike Arrington, meanwhile, seems more than a little bemused to be the spark for this little journalistic contretemps, which apparently started with some interviews for a story involving him, and figures Wired probably won’t do the story now. And Wired makes fun of the whole “ironic” thing in a blog post, pointing out that it plans to get some pneumatic tubes installed so it can be more hip. Some people, including James Robertson and Dan Gillmor, don’t think Wired’s response was too funny.

Funny or not, the thing I can’t get my head around is why the writer didn’t want to do an email interview. I love it when people want to do email interviews, because it’s a lot faster, and you know you’re going to get what you want without as much potential for misunderstanding . And I can see why certain people — like Mark Cuban, for example — like to do it that way, so that they don’t have their words twisted (yes, that occasionally happens in journalism).

Ian Betteridge makes a good point in his post, which is that a phone interview can produce something different than an email interview because the discussion can go in different directions. And that is definitely true. But there’s a lot to be said for the speed and accuracy that email brings too.

Update:

The Wired writer, Fred Vogelstein, has responded to Jason and the kerfuffle (or is it a brouhaha?) on the Epicenter blog, and has posted the email trail with Calacanis. Ironically, he says that he doesn’t do email interviews because there’s too much room for interpretation — but he agreed to call Jason and tape the interview and then send him the file. Jason’s reaction is here and the Podtech podcast is embedded below. Jeff Jarvis has some thoughts here.

Gratuitous egotism:

In the Podtech podcast between Jason and Fred Vogelstein, Jason is talking about how anyone can become part of the A-list, and he mentions yours truly. Thanks, Jason (although it’s the Globe and Mail by the way, not the Globe and Mall). The cheque is in the mail. And thanks to Pete Quily for mentioning it in the comments here.