Weeklies

I’ve read so many lists of how to be an effective journalist by developing contacts. Indeed, one of my favorite aspects of being a reporter is that it gets me out and doing things. For New Year’s I was at a series of concerts in Blue Hill. I was not on assignment and feeling a little bemused at what was being offered when it occurred to me that if I were on assignment I would be forced to, say, go to the belly dancing demostration. Now, I’m not interested in that at all intrinsically, but when forced I’m sure I would have had a great time.

In response to this, I suppose one could say that all I need to do is recognize when I build a wall in my head against things that I may not like. But I don’t believe it’s that easy, and part of parsing the world involves deciding what you do or do not like. I go to as many things for journlistic reasons that make me want to shoot myself in the head, but it’s the positive ones that I take away from the job.

In any case . . . I began this post because I realized that while culturing contacts and people who can tip you off or provide quotes is a great thing to do, my problem is walking that line between getting good information from them and bothering the hell out of them. I once read a Peace Corp memoir about someone’s travels in China and realized that nearly every “amazing” person he met was probably rolling their eyes as this big white man furiously scribbled in a notebook for “posterity,” read: publishing potential.

Not all people love talking to a reporter. My hope, and I suppose it could be a resolution for 2008 as well, is to be better at recognizing when I’ve pushed to hard on a contact and when I haven’t pushed hard enough.