“My editor wanted me to ask Angelina Jolie if she was still having sex with Brad Pitt while she was pregnant,” said Dave Karger to Jill Grossman’s journalistic inquiry class.

After 13 years of interviewing celebrities for Entertainment Weekly, Karger’s a master of getting good quotes and asking potentially awkward questions. “I don’t ask questions. I make observations,” Karger said. “Its like, I said something and now its your turn.”

Karger’s candid stories about driving George Clooney to lunch in a white Chevy Avalon, about Steve Martin’s surprisingly absent sense of humor, about getting yelled at by an interviewee caught in a lie, revealed something of a paradox in Karger. Despite regularly interacting with some of America’s biggest celebrities, he clearly identified with the rookie questions of 20-year old journalism students.

Want to be a better journalist? Learn from those who have already done it.

Oh, and check out the article on Jolie. Apparently Karger fulfilled his editor’s request without actually asking the awkward question.

Photo: Screen shot from EW.com