Is there a site to connect journalists with sources?

September 18, 2006 2:02 AM

I'm thinking about building an online networking site for journalists seeking quotes from people in remote places, but want to make sure such a thing doesn't already exist.

What I'm thinking of is a basic forum that allows journalists in one state to connect with people in other states when they need to interview someone about a topic germane to where the other person is - say, if I'm writing a story about a particular store in New Hampshire and I want to get a quote from someone who has shopped there.

Journalists always have a need for such sources, and I see no reason why those sources couldn't be other writers - so this would in effect be a "quote-swapping" service, matchmaking, as it were.

Does such a thing already exist? And if not, if I build it, will they come?

posted by jbickers to computers & internet (14 comments total)

Forgot to mention: I've tried using craigslist for this, and it works intermittently. But I'm still wondering if a dedicated site for this wouldn't work much better.
posted by jbickers at 2:03 AM on September 18, 2006

Well, I can see two problems --

• journalists pride themselves on having good sources: it's part of their professional toolkit and develops over years. Why would they give them away? Why would they contribute their time? What are they specifically getting back, apart from the generalised Wikipædia-type benefit of the site being good for everyone?
• who says the contacts are good? What's to stop bad/spurious/commercial contacts putting themselves forward for their own purposes?

posted by AmbroseChapel at 2:41 AM on September 18, 2006

Could you explain the idea a bit more? I'm confused -- if we are to quote other writers, what about the possible conflicts of interest that may result?

For example: I'm writing a story about an ice cream parlor that is about to open in New York. The owner has another parlor in Rhode Island, and I'm looking for people to tell me what they think about the quality of the ice cream. If my source is a reporter at the Providence Journal, she might think twice about saying anything about Ice Cream Guy because she needs to maintain professional objectivity. If, down the road, she is assigned a story about Ice Cream Guy, she won't be able to do it if she's already said he's awesome/awful.

On the other hand, it would be perfectly sensible to contact, say, the food critic for a local paper in Rhode Island. Food critics can and do go on the record with their opinions about things. But in that case ... why not just call the food critic and skip the Website?

Would your site simply be an exchange of written words, or would the reporters get each other's names and phone numbers? If that's the case, it seems it would be useful if only for reporters to connect one another like so:

• Reporter A from NY is doing a story on Ice Cream Guy.
• Reporter B from RI has done stories on Ice Cream Guy before.
• Reporter A and Reporter B meet on your Website.
• Reporter B gives Reporter A names and numbers of best contacts for quotes about Ice Cream Guy.

Hmm. Now that is a service I might use, especially if the interface were really good. You could sort by topics, geography, date. And in addition to being a good resource, it would also be great for networking with other journalists and hearing about job openings or other opportunities.
posted by brina at 2:56 AM on September 18, 2006

Brina, that's close to what I'm thinking. In response to Ambrose's question, I should clarify that I'm not talking Woodward & Bernstein-level stuff here - clearly, nobody is going to do that kind of contact-sharing online.

Recently, I was looking for satisfied customers of a particular retail establishment in another state, for a story about the store's recent expansion. As I mentioned, craigslist was a help, but the spam level there is just so high.

I'm thinking along the lines of a message board with forums for each state. A typical post might be "Wanted: fast-food fans in Cleveland" or "Wanted: people who have purchased an MP3 player from XYZ Retail in Michigan."

My thinking is that most journalists would be happy to be sources themselves for such stories - I'm in Kentucky, and if someone needed a quote about something happening in Kentucky, I'd be happy to be a source. Hence the "source-swapping" idea ...
posted by jbickers at 3:39 AM on September 18, 2006

Is it built? Media Bistro's bulletin board has a 'sources' section, where writers post stories they're working on and ask for contacts / case studies.

JournoBiz from the UK also has a request for case study section on its newsletters.

Is that the sort of thing you mean?

And would they come? I dunno.

There always seem to be stacks of folk asking for sources who want to visit a baby psychic / have used yoga to overcome personal tragedy / survived a shark attack. So, there seems to be a demand for it.

And for freelancers trying to establish themselves as experts in a particular area, it could be great. So, if you wanted to specialise in, oh, say... cake making, it might help to build your profile if you were quoted as a source in other stories about the cake making craze that's sweeping your town.

But I can think of a few reasons I wouldn't use it. These are offered in the spirit of providing some objections you might overcome – not to say it's no good and no-one would use it.

If it's man-on-the street, rather than expert, I'd want a source no-one else has spoken to, not someone who might have given quotes to other writers about a given topic.

If it's expert comment, well, there's a million and one places I can find that already.

I wouldn't be that keen on putting my story ideas up on the web to ask for sources to come forward. To me, that's a recipe for 'steal my story please.'

I personally, wouldn't want to be a source in someone else's story. That's not an absolute thing – I mean, I'd do it for a friend overseas, as a favour, for example. But I wouldn't put myself forward.

But, you know, despite all of that, I'd never write off any potential source. So, if it were built, I'd bookmark it and keep it in the back of my mind, and who knows. There are a million different paths to a story and I'd never want to close myself off to anything that might lead me somewhere interesting.

Last: if it were to be something along the lines of brina's suggestion, more of a networking / contact swapping thing, then definitely, I'd be interested.
posted by t0astie at 4:14 AM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Here's what bothers me about the idea: the way that it glibly refers to "quotes" as a commodity of sorts.

Yes, we all know that journalists live and die by the quotes they obtain (or don't obtain). But that said, this is not the way to think about writing a story. Sources should be cultivated, and perhaps found by word of mouth—but they should never be thought of as mere mouthpieces for quotes.

Is my objection a matter of terminology? You bet. But I think the terminology used here bespeaks an attitude that undermines the best interests of the wider journalism community. Journalism is undergoing a crisis of legitimacy in many areas, and you (and so many others) still refer to stories in this piecemeal kind of way, as though you simply need to string a few quotes together and—BAM!—there's your story.

On a certain, very mechanical level, yes, that's what journalism is about, esp. on a bad day when you're tired and just need to get the story out. But thinking about stories this way not only does a disservice to the profession, but also insults your sources. For years, I've worked with reporters who call up sources and ask them some variant on the following: "Hi, I'm a reporter from ____, and I was wondering if I could get a quote from you about ____." It burns me up to hear things like this, because ideally, shouldn't sources—who you need and rely upon!—be afforded more respect, regard and dignity than that?

To my way of thinking, referring to "getting quotes for a story" or any variant thereof, even when you're behind closed doors with colleagues in an office setting away from sources, is a step down a slippery slope of thought that often leads a reporter to think about sources as quote-generation machines and nothing more. Further, it undermines the story-gathering aspect of journalism, because instead of following the story wherever it takes you, you're often securing quotes to support a predefined idea of where the story should go.

And as AmbroseChapel mentioned, vetting the legitimacy of sources is paramount. What would stop commercial interests (or those supporting commercial interests) from putting themselves forward as "experts" on various topics?

A networking site like this could be useful, there's no doubt about it. But I think you should reevaluate your attitude towards quotes and sources before undertaking something like this.

(Refutatio: It may be that you don't really see quotes as an issue, or that you just haven't thought about the greater issues raised by the existence of a "quote-swapping" service. Perhaps this response is the first time you've heard about these issues. If so, I apologize if it sounds like I'm attacking you. I'm not trying to. I simply want to make it clear that issues of journalistic ethics come into play when you suggest a site like this.)
posted by limeonaire at 4:56 AM on September 18, 2006 [1 favorite has favorites]

Limeonaire, I clearly expressed myself wrong - I'm talking "source-swapping," not "quote-swapping." I'm talking about a place to ask for opinions on specific topics - not unlike what we do here - but being able to limit those questions to specific geographic regions.
posted by jbickers at 5:19 AM on September 18, 2006

I don't get it either. In brina's example, if I were doing a story about Ice Cream Guy in RI, I might just call up the reporter in RI whose Ice Cream Guy story is in nexis to ask for help on who to talk to. Why would I need a website?

Also, you might be happy to offer up your opinions of a fast food chain or whatever, but most reporters would not.

I guess I still don't get what would be traded.
posted by CunningLinguist at 6:08 AM on September 18, 2006

It's actually pretty easy to find people in "remote" parts of the US. Use a phone book -- paper or online -- or poke around using the right keyworks/tags on myspace or technorati.

If there were a database of reliable English-speaking observers in remote geographical corners of the non-first world, I could imagine that becoming useful, perhaps. Or maybe not, I wouldn't use it on my beat, but it might help some folks.
posted by croutonsupafreak at 6:43 AM on September 18, 2006

I agree with ... everything everyone else said.

If you want to make this work -- and I think it can -- you need to narrow it down. Small daily papers in the United States. Circulation below 40,000. Community coverage only. And some things should be topical. For instance:

Lord knows we were all doing bedbug stories for awhile there. What's the best way to do a bedbug story? Maybe reporters can post their own work, or you could build a message board for discussion. Was it helpful to talk with the PR woman at Orkin? How did you get stats on bedbug infestations, as they're not considered a public health risk in most states?

Maybe the result isn't just sourcing but coming up with new, creative ways to write the same story everyone else has done. When I was a health reporter, I would have loved to discuss issues with people with similar beats at similar news organizations in other places. What do we say about flu season and vaccines this year? How do we frame it differently from the way we did last year? How bored are we all with being health reporters? How do we stop being bored with it? What's the best story we did this year?

If you created a topical forum, I'm sure you'd get lots of visitors ... then again, there are still the PR hacks and plagiarists to deal with.
posted by brina at 7:18 AM on September 18, 2006

I think I know roughly what you're getting at, and there's the germ of a really good idea there (especially useful for human interest and consumer stories). My worry is that it's actually the germ of two ideas, that aren't necessarily compatible without some heavy-duty sitebuilding behind them.

One is simply a communally-contributed database of people to contact for stories about keywords w,x, y in location z. For example, the BBC contacts database is (from repute) a fearsomely impressive resource - pretty much anybody who's been a contributor to a BBC show is on it, with notes as to what they can talk about, who they are, if the journalist would recommend using them again, etc...

I'd imagine the same is true of many large, distributed newsgathering organisations, which gives them a huge lhead start over independents in terms of finding that all-important unemployed dental nurse coping with an autistic son in Michigan when you really need one.

And equally, as Brina said, a networking/discussion/tip-swapping site for journalists could be a really good idea. The question is, are they the same site? Because for them to work well, they're both going to need some well-worked architecture, and I'm not sure the structure of one lends itself to the structure of the other...

And, as others have said, when you suggested that most journalists would be happy to act as quoted sources for other journalists, that raised a huge flagof badness. Most times, no they really wouldn't. They might help you out in other ways, but actually giving a personal quote to another journalist will be a big practical and/or ethical no-no for the majority.

So I'd have a think about what it is exactly that you want to do - is it a database, a social-networking site, a forum, or a combination of them all? Once you've got that straight, you can think about how to deal with the specific problems of creating a user base, filtering out PRs and astroturfers, etc.
posted by flashboy at 12:23 PM on September 18, 2006

And, as others have said, when you suggested that most journalists would be happy to act as quoted sources for other journalists, that raised a huge flagof badness. Most times, no they really wouldn't. They might help you out in other ways, but actually giving a personal quote to another journalist will be a big practical and/or ethical no-no for the majority.

Okay, consider this can of worms officially opened. I write about a niche within a niche (a very specific aspect of retail technology). A friend writes about the restaurant industry. If he wants to interview me about my thoughts on the new sandwich at McDonald's - not as a journalist, but as someone who likes to eat sandwiches - how is that an ethical no-no?

I resist the idea that a person's opinion on one topic is compromised and/or less valuable because that person makes some or all of his/her living writing about (other) topics.

I'm guessing the concern came from a lack of clarity on my part; I see that I may have painted a picture in which two general-beat reporters swap quotes on similar stories as a shortcut to meeting a deadline. That, clearly, is low class in the extreme, and in no way what I am getting at. But maybe, I'm beginning to think, a site like the one I've been pondering would encourage exactly that.
posted by jbickers at 4:11 PM on September 18, 2006

I resist the idea that a person's opinion on one topic is compromised and/or less valuable because that person makes some or all of his/her living writing about (other) topics.

You have it backwards. It's not the quotee's opinion on a sandwich that's suspect/compromised, it's his own later work. Say you try the new McWendyking Artery Clogger Supreme and love it and rave about it to your pal covering the restaurant industry and then you later have to write about McWendyking in some capacity..... Okay, well, actually this is a dopey example because the likelihood of your integrity appearing compromised in that situation is minuscule. But most reporters don't want to be on record shilling for (or criticizing) any product or person or party.

I do wish there were a kind of AskMe just for reporters (complete with anonymous questions!), but that's not what you seem to be considering.
posted by CunningLinguist at 5:27 AM on September 19, 2006

I do wish there were a kind of AskMe just for reporters (complete with anonymous questions!), but that's not what you seem to be considering.

Actually, that's it exactly! You've put it into words when I failed to. An AskMe for reporters, with region/state/city-specific tagging.
posted by jbickers at 8:07 AM on September 19, 2006