2026-10-08
Disclaimer
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Imagine you’ve just hired a rookie reporter straight out of college. How do they get sources?
See people in person. Don’t rely on electronic communication. Develop information that you can trade to people. People who are good sources typically implicitly want to get information, not just give it. So learn how to trade information, learn how to acquire information, learn what information has value. A lot of people who have been my sources for years take my calls because they know it’s likely I’ll be bringing things to the conversation that they want to know.
Treat everyone with respect, regardless of what jobs they have. Be particularly kind to people when they’re on the outs, rather than just the people who are riding high. Be a sophisticated gatherer of understanding about how systems work and how relationships work, so you know who the best people to cultivate are.
And always resist the temptation to rely on one or two people. Those one or two people may not know what you need to know. They may not be willing to help you. They may not be sufficient to allow you to break news.
Some of my colleagues have a tendency to say, “Oh, I know Senator So-and-So’s communications director, so I don’t need to know anybody else connected to Senator So-and-So.” You have to resist relying on just one person, or even a handful of people, and have the broadest possible sources.
Imagine you’re interested in, say, Kash Patel. What kind of sources would you go after?
Top 10 staffers. Top 10 reporters who cover him. Top three cable news hosts he talks to. And then rank-and-file FBI agents who you have reason to believe would have line of sight to what was going on, even if they weren’t particularly close to him. In fact, maybe you want people who aren’t close to him at all, and aren’t loyal to him.
In Washington, people tend to focus on the same handful of people, like second graders around a soccer ball. It’s good to think about where else to look. FBI agents, Secret Service agents, bureaucrats: those are some of my best sources, because they’re not typically cultivated, and they’re often as knowledgeable as almost anybody else.
Ok, you’ve developed your Kash Patel sources. Now some scandal breaks. All your sources know they probably shouldn’t be telling you X or Y information, especially when the heat is on. How do you get the goods?
One of the biggest mistakes people make in source cultivation is to only call sources when you need something. It’s not always doomed, but in my experience it’s pretty close to always doomed. You just have to be a human being and be in touch with people. If they’re going through a hard time, that’s a good time to call them. If you’ve got something you think they might be interested in knowing, that’s a good time to call them. If there’s something interesting in the news you’d both like to talk about, that’s a good time to call them. The odds that someone will help you in a breaking news situation are significantly higher if you’ve reached out to them innumerable times not pegged to a breaking news story.
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