Playing favorites
Dave Winer poses an interesting model: If a reporter wants to plant a foot in the future and burn some bridges with the past, a simple project would be to build a network model for who gets quoted by which reporters at which publications.
I'm sure we play favorites sometimes. Reporters learn who is accessible, gives good quotes and has a position that conveys authority. They become comfortable with the source and turn to him/her when they need someone to provide context or commentary. I'm not talking about public officials who are legitimately quoted as part of a news story.
Some years ago, a reporter told me that a good trend piece had to have a quote from a professor. That gave the piece gravitas, he said. Never mind that the story was about hot pink hot pants. I once "banned" photos of an academician at Guilford College because we published 11 items about him -- with the same mug shot every time -- in one seven-month period.
Our sources used to be so thin in the black community that we would turn to the same people -- ministers and activists, mostly -- time and time again for a comment about this issue or that trend. I hope we've done better there in recent years.
I'm sure there are people in this category we quote too often, but I'm at an immediate loss to name them. Who are they?
Comments (5)
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Why only people with a position and important title?There are also people with opinions who work just as hard who give to others and are not recognized. How about this" I recently found out I have cancer,took a leave of absence from work,filled out necessary papers for benefits,they take so long to process that now I and my 14 year old son are being evicted 4 days from surgery to remove a cancerous tumor. So called officials church and others can only say I'm sorry.I often see officials helping if it only gets their picture in the paper. As for contacts they get paid for it.
Posted on November 15, 2006 3:08 PM
I'd argue that the story there is how and why this happens. For that you'd need to talk to the people who work within the system to find out what's wrong with it. Most of those people will have titles.
Man-on-the-street interviews or interviews with citizens to see how they've been impacted are always important - but getting someone who can speak with some authority (that is to say, has studied, is recognized as an expert in, is directly involved in) whatever you're writing about is probably more useful to the reader who wants knowledge or wants to hear people account for themselves.
Posted on November 16, 2006 1:52 PM
Debbage. With his column and all the stories he's quoted in you'd think he invented urban growth and economic development.
Posted on November 16, 2006 2:44 PM
I think that's accurate, Rob. We use Keith Debbage a lot because he's a great source, but it is easy to get into the routine of talking to the same good people over and over.
The same could be said for Don Jud, whom the biz staff here uses in what seems like 80 percent of local economic stories.
Every publication does it, and it seems to happen a lot in business. The Biz Journal, for example, asks someone from Kotis Properties to weigh in every single time they write a retail story, even though there are a number of people in the area who can speak about retail trends and development.
Posted on November 16, 2006 5:07 PM
I remember reading about this idea (databasing the quotes in newspaper stories) last spring, in Adrian Holovaty's article, Dynamic News Stories ( http://www.xml.com/pub/a/2006/05/17/dynamic-news-stories.html ).
Last month I was talking about that idea to a reporter at my new job (Denver Post). At first she reacted negatively and said that reporters wouldn't like it and readers wouldn't care. I was like, "maybe you're right," but then I remembered transparency. I asked her if she thought the transparency gained from indexing quotes could help readers trust the paper more. She thought about it and agreed.
Posted on November 25, 2006 9:28 PM