I love what I do for a living. I really do. I know I’ve said it before and I’ll continue to say it because I have one of the coolest jobs ever.
But that doesn’t mean it doesn’t have its downsides. One of my least favorite parts of my job is performing what I like to call journalistic fellatio. It’s my own wonderfully crude term for those stories that I have to do to keep the people who provide me with information happy.
I generally don’t mind doing those sorts of stories. They tend to draw a lot of readers. The sources are always willing to talk because it’s a story about something happy that makes everyone involved look really good and involves no controversy whatsoever. And for some reason, people read them.
The other upside, of course, is that they keep my sources happy. If I’ve learned one thing in my short professional career, it’s that I need happy sources. I need my sources willing to give me information about both the happy things and the not-so-happy things.
But damn it all, I cannot for the life of me figure out why people read those sorts of fluff pieces. Maybe it’s just a matter of taste or maybe it’s that I’m just a sick bastard who feeds off human misery – or both. Whatever it is, I can’t wrap my head around why people are drawn to those sappy, happy stories.
It’s really all part of the game, I guess. Dealing with sources is one of the hardest skills to learn and it is always being perfected. There are some sources I can push until they crack and give me information. With others, I need to gently dance around a question and ask it six different ways before getting anything resembling an answer. With others, I have to agree to let them go off the record and just let them give me starting points.
As a result, I have to adapt my tactics to the people I deal with. And so while I may complain about those stories I think of as journalistic fellatio, I’ll keep doing them because it’s worth it to have sources that trust and like me. And that’s the essence of the game. I need to trust my sources to deliver information. But in order for that to happen with any regularity, I need to give my sources a reason to deliver that information to me. And so I’ll do those happy, sappy stories from time to time. If it means just one juicy bit of information, it’s totally worth it.
3 Comments
October 21, 2008 at 11:42 pm
Hmm, I was expecting dirtier journography.
Journalistic fellatio could also be described as a sort of correspondent mutual masturbation
October 21, 2008 at 11:50 pm
It could be, though “correspondent mutual masturbation” implies that I perform journalistic fellatio on other reporters, which I don’t because they’re my competition. q=
October 22, 2008 at 11:04 pm
[...] Journalistic fellatio | The Quad City Reporter – "I have to adapt my tactics to the people I deal with. And so while I may complain about those stories I think of as journalistic fellatio, I’ll keep doing them because it’s worth it to have sources that trust and like me. And that’s the essence of the game. I need to trust my sources to deliver information. But in order for that to happen with any regularity, I need to give my sources a reason to deliver that information to me. And so I’ll do those happy, sappy stories from time to time. If it means just one juicy bit of information, it’s totally worth it." [...]