With reference to the French press, this study is the first of its kind to portray the historical development of the journalistic interview. From a Romance studies perspective, the study examines how this text variety has established itself as a journalistic tradition since the 19th century. The analysis avails itself of methods that have evolved in pragmatically oriented text linguistics and centers on the concept of visit. As a text genre based squarely on bourgeois social traditions this phenomenon has had a decisive impact on the French interview tradition and also testifies to the historical kinship between interviews and features.