"Sourcing up" means leaving the newsroom and going out into the real world and finding people who know things, with the aim of convincing them to tell you interesting things later.
Outside of the media world, this is usually known as "going to lunch."
Getting sources is a time-consuming and laborious part of the job, which also often involves eating and drinking delicious food and beverages and ultimately distinguishes the best reporters from those who write generic copy. So it deserves a bit of attention.
How To Find Sources
It helps if they actually want to talk to you. Most people do not want to have disjointed conversations with 24-year-old reporters unless there is something in it for them.
There are three approaches to sourcing:
The extrovert approach, which is to make oneself as visible as possible through a combination of engaging in self-promotion, participating in a wide variety of media, hosting and moderating conference events, arranging drinks and dinner events and inviting as many people as possible, and generally trying to make connections out in the open. This is more common in broadcast than print news.
The introvert approach, which involves painstakingly targeting the most knowledgable sources, being very careful about protecting them, and slowly building a reputation for getting scoops. Generally this approach is the most valuable in the eyes of news organisations and their readers.
The stupid approach, which involves turning up at a press conference with two dozen other journalists, letting the other reporters ask the questions, then flinging a business card at the speaker at the end and hoping for the best.
I’m mostly going to focus on method 2. Don't do number 3 except as a last resort.1
Good LinkedIn
LinkedIn is a very useful website for reporting, when used correctly.
The killer feature is employee search, especially people who previously worked at a company or organisation that you are currently researching. You can also filter by the number of years worked at an organisation.
It’s worth considering LinkedIn Premium to gain access to InMail, which is one of the best ways to reach people you find on the site, as many people connect their accounts to personal or work email addresses.
There is a confusing array of plans, of which Recruiter mode gives you the largest number of InMail credits, albeit at the highest cost. There is a one-month free trial available if you want to get a feel for how it works.
Bad LinkedIn
It’s a bad idea to connect with your sources directly on LinkedIn. It is akin to publishing your Rolodex.
I have found many competitors’ sources from LinkedIn in the past and I will gladly do so again. You can just go through and hoover up whoever sounds vaguely interesting. It’s super dumb and I make no apologies.
How To Trust
Trust is a precious commodity, and easily lost. This goes both ways.
You can save a lot of time trying to find the right contact if you can get an existing source to recommend you to someone else. This will also help the new contact trust you from the outset. Remember that many people will judge others by their taste in people, and you can use that to your advantage.
There is an appealing theory that there are no stupid questions in journalism. But there are. Some will cost you credibility with your sources and make them think less of you.
It’s better not to burn a source. But don’t let them burn you either, and stick to your principles.
Maintain a sense of adversarial detachment at all times and insist upon boundaries. The more that your source wishes to massage your treatment of them or their subject area of expertise, the more internal warning bells should be going off. Definitely don't let them see your copy before it goes to print - this is a firing offence for most journalists.
In fact, don’t even let them see quotes before they go to print. A common manoeuvre is to say that “oh, all the other journalists let me see what they’re going to write.” Well, you are not all the other journalists. They suck, you’re the real deal, and never forget that, dear reader.2
Working for a big name can definitely make people more willing to talk to you.3 But while a prestigious organisation will get you through the door, you absolutely must have done your research, or your source will see right through you.
Do not try to wing it in an interview, ever.4
Sources can also burn you, attempt to extract intelligence from you that you don't want to share, and feed you nonsense. As ever, the important thing is to use your judgment.
🎶 Musical Interlude 🎶
How To Store Your Sources
This sounds mundane but isn't. You need a good system for storing your contacts.
It's a good idea to write on every business card you pick up where you met that person so you can jog their memory if you ever had to call them. For example:
"Hey! It's Gregor Stuart Hunter here at [news organisation]. We met at the [such and such event] at the [place] in [time]. Did I catch you at a good time? I remembered you made some great points about [an unbelievably niche subject area]. Would you have a minute to talk about [whatever news has just broken that involves that topic?]"
This is not a theoretical exercise. At The Wall Street Journal, we often referred to "Get Up and Dance Day." The idea is that every day, a spotlight roams around the newsroom, looking for an unlucky reporter to land on. Wherever it stopped, and no matter what the poor soul beneath it was doing at that time, it was time to get up and dance!
The point is you need to have a good way to retrieve your contacts in a hurry. When news breaks you need to know whom to call immediately.
Don't just shove all of the business cards you've received in a drawer and hope for the best when you are on deadline and you need to make a call.
You can buy a business card holder or a Rolodex to store all of your cards, but then you might lose them, or realise you’ve left them in the other office when you go on a trip.
Camcard is great for processing the vast numbers of business cards you accumulate in the average week of reporting, but if you are working in China or have sources there, do note that its owner, INTSIG Information Co., Ltd., is headquartered in Shanghai.
In general, one should be wary of storing things in the cloud. If you are trying to protect a source this may do the opposite, and if you are truly paranoid you will want to have them on a hard drive, not stored on someone else's server. There is a trade-off between your own data security and how much time you are willing to devote to maintaining this.
A good rule of thumb is that if a story requires three quotes, it will require emails or calls to at least five different people who have reliably provided comment in the past. This way you can account for people on leave or who can't provide any help. For the quotes to offer any insight, or if it is a subject I don't usually cover, increase the number to ten. If that sounds like overkill, bear in mind it’s almost always better to have more material than not enough.
Generally speaking, meetings beat phone calls beat emailed requests for comment, but it's nice to have a paper trail.
The Five Guys Theory of Journalism
It's an appealingly straightforward method, which, I am sad to say, I did not invent.
The thinking goes like this:
Find five people who are more informed about their industry than anyone else
Constantly check in with them
Get the best stories
The best sources are those that have some understanding of journalists. Those that worked for their college newspaper before turning their hand to something more useful, for example. Or people who harboured ambitions to enter the media before selling out to do something more lucrative.
But they also need to know what's going on.
When you find them, treasure these people. Bradley Hope, who along with Tom Wright wrote Billion Dollar Whale, once told me that sourcing was like "a love affair", and I can't do better than that.
Sources Are People Too
Key to sourcing is that you need to understand people and their motivations.
Some people like to feel important by talking to journalists.
Some genuinely want to get important information out to your readers. But there are many ways to do this nowadays, so if they are seeking you out, you should ask why.
When You’ve Made It
If you are sufficiently aggressive in your questioning and regarded with high regard in the media industry, information will start coming to you. Hah! Just kidding. It means you’ve earned a reputation as a patsy. Get back to work.5
You can still turn up at the press conference, shove a microphone under the speaker's nose, and ask them about something completely unrelated to, and hopefully more interesting than what they're there to talk about. This is a doorstep, and it is a legitimate move.
In my view, it’s absolutely essential to check factual points. Quotes are more slippery. I will often repeat what a source has said back to them during an interview if I want to quote it, especially so if it sounds dicey and they are talking on-the-record. But every time you do so, you are leaving yourself vulnerable. Emailing a source their quote so that their press department can sign off on it is asking for trouble and will mess you around when you are on deadline.
As a 20-year-old intern at the Financial Times, I remember phoning up companies for commentary on this or that, fully expecting to get the runaround, only for a receptionist to reply "oh right, I'll get the CEO then." Put mildly, this was overwhelming.
Gregor. Seriously. Not ever! Listen this time, please.
The clue here is that nobody treats each other with high regard in the media industry.