Journalists multitask. While waiting to be transferred from receptionist to receptionist, journalists clean out their inboxes, make dinner plans and search for that weird smell in the newsroom (hint hint – sports).
While driving all over town trying to pin down a talking head to confirm a fact, a journalist will simultaneously be checking e-mail looking for that .pdf from the mayor’s office, calling to see when the drycleaners close and ignoring back-to-back calls from an editor calling about where the break-out box is for tomorrow’s story.
Because journalists spend so much time with sources – meeting with them over coffee, going through budgets line by line after hours and staying constantly in touch via e-mail, phone, text message, Twitter, etc. – it’s only in a journalist’s nature to multitask and combine business and pleasure with sources.
It happens to journalists from time to time– wanting more than a quote from a source.
Sure, impartial journalists can say it’s completely unethical, wrong and can only end with it blowing up in journalists’ faces, but . . . we all know journalists are not completely impartial.
It’s a known fact that when it comes to priorities, a journalist’s love life comes somewhere in between remembering to feed Muggles the cat and making a dentist appointment.
So what’s a journalist with no time to do to scratch that certain itch? Get a cozy with a source.
Sure, sleeping with a source can have its potential fallbacks – a bad breakup can lead to the source blackballing the journalist, awkwardness at city hall meetings and sure, sleeping with a source can cost a journalist his or her precious job.
On the rare occasion, it can lead to a happy marriage or a way of out of journalism by becoming a public servant’s new arm candy. Dating the mayor of Los Angeles helps.
A journalist is only has good as his or her sources, and a source that includes a booty call is as good as it gets sometimes.
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Topics:
journalist dating source, source dating
It also helps to fraternize with your own co-workers sometimes.
I’m marrying our photographer in a couple months, so that worked out well.
Check out #69 dating other journalists. http://www.stuffjournalistslike.com/2008/12/69-dating-other.html
ahem…no comment…good piece