Being A Good Newspaperman

This column originally appeared on Sunday, Jan. 11, 2009.

Like any good newspaperman, I have my share of secret sources, those people who call me on the telephone using hushed voices to relate information that otherwise would not see the light of day, leaving it up to me whether to investigate further in the cause of freedom and justice or to put the notes in a stack of press releases from the public relations firm that believes the next Pulitzer Prize-winning story is the one involving their client, the Roto-Tiller Cultural Institute and Dramatic Society, of Modena.

And like any good newspaperman, I keep the identities of those secret sources anonymous, refusing to tell anyone, even them, who they are, not even if compelled to by a court of law. New York Times scribe Judy Miller, who went to jail to protect someone who had actually told her it was all right with him to say his name in public, has nothing on me. I would gladly be incarcerated to protect the sanctity of the reporter-source relationship, especially because I am under the distinct impression my landlord will forgo any rent due while I am an official Guest of Her Majesty, as we like to say around the Chester County Justice Center.

So like any good newspaperman, I am not going to divulge the identity of the secret source who I spoke with last week and who informed me, somewhat breathlessly, that he had witnessed …

What? I thought. Official corruption? Bribes being passed between obscenely rich land developers and municipal codes enforcement officers? Text messages describing illicit encounters between high-profile county elected officials and certain cocktail waitresses who wore Dolly Parton-esque wigs? What was he spilling the beans about?

… a Bald Eagle flying down Route 322 outside Downingtown.

I may have not gotten the story straight at this point, so forgive me if what I am reporting here today is not as accurate as I normally demand of my work. But frankly, I quit listening when it dawned on me that what he was giving up was about as much value in the world of high-powered investigative reporting as the worn Chuck Converse high-top sneakers I threw away last month. There’s Gov. Rod Blagojevich caught on tape selling U.S. Senate appointments like so many beef ‘n beer tickets, and then there’s the occasional avian sighting outside West Chester. Or Downingtown. Whatever.

Don’t get me wrong. I am all for stories about Bald Eagles. And American Eagles. And the occasional osprey. I once spent several hours of my working day chronicling the discovery outside the Daily Local News offices’ of an exotic cockatoo and the bird’s eventual reunion with its owner. Even though some readers have of late referred to me as “completely offensive, arrogant and disrespectful,” I feel I can relate to the public’s general sense of newsworthy fascination in finding sea gulls pecking at food crumbs in the parking lot of the Giant supermarket across the street from our offices.

I would even be willing to participate in a newspaper contest to name a parrot who saved a woman from burning in a house fire and who later turned out to be of a different gender than first assumed – as a certain unnamed publication once did.

But why, I wondered to myself, did I have to keep the source’s name a secret? Was the person someone involved in anti-Bald Eagle activities and wanted to keep their bias out of the paper? Would the person’s employers wonder what he, or she, was doing calling the media to report local raptor activity? Was the person flat out lying and not wanting to be caught misrepresenting what had been seen?

I halfway feel like outing my secret source, thus punishing him for bothering me with this scoop-less scoop. But that would be unethical, and possibly time consuming. So I did what I always do in these situations. I told him I’d “look into it,” and “get back to him” if necessary. And I considered what angle the folks at the Roto-Tiller Cultural Institute and Dramatic Society, of Modena, had in mind exactly. Like any good newspaperman would.