Having never set foot in a college level journalism class, I wouldn’t know where to even begin in order to try to reach Neil Armstrong. Seriously, what am I gonna do, call NASA and ask for Mr. Armstrong’s home telephone number? Yet articles are published pretty regularly in which Mr. Armstrong adds a few lines, so obviously journalists are finding a way to contact him.
How do journailists find people and reach them for their articles? For a public figure, like, say, Neil Armstrong, surely someone somewhere knows his home telephone number and may give it to you, IF he/she is impressed enough with your credentials. But you’ve got to find that person.
If it’s an obscure person, like, say, Duffy Stroud (who, if still alive, is probably pushing 35, but who made headlines as an elementary school student for getting expelled for screaming fire & brimstone sermons at school), where would I even begin, if I wanted to write a “Where Are They Now?” article? It’s not like he has an agent. A google search turned up the results of a high school track meet.
So, what tools do journalists have at their disposal for finding (and interviewing) people who don’t have publicists and agents and whatnot?
In the example you gave, you would probably start by calling someone at the school or even just somebody in Duffy’s (?) home town to see if they knew where he went. It might even be a case of turning up in town and poking around.
Basically it’s good old-fashioned detective work. If a person is obscure, they probably have no need to keep themselves out of the phone book and/or electoral roll., so you can go digging.
If they are well known and therefore more reclusive, they are probably well enough known that local people know where they live. Plus, journalists use their contacts - when working on newspapers I regularly get global emails asking “Does anybody have a contact number for (X)?”. In a large organisation the chances are good that one of your colleagues has contacted the person before, if they are reasonably well known.
Journalists find out phone numbers the same way anybody else does. They ask around. That’s what they do for a living. They also use things called phone books. You’d be surprised who is listed sometimes.
My brother is a journalist and once he gets a number he saves it in a couple of places. He likes to impress by naming a famous person and saying “Hey, I’ve got X’s cell phone number, want to call him and chat?”
I once managed a contest won by a very shy person with an unlisted phone number. We arranged a system where a reporter trying to contact the winner would contact me, and I passed the request on to the winner.
If I were looking for someone like the above-mentioned Duffy Stroud, I’d start with a local phone book from his last-known location.
Heh… two or three years ago a colleague gave me Osama bin Laden’s satellite phone number, and I kept it stored in my mobile phone. Good for those “who shall we phone?” moments down the pub, and also for ensuring you appear on CIA databases I shouldn’t wonder.
Yes, that’s the honest truth, although I must admit that by the time I called it, it diverted to a recorded message. I just dialled it a moment ago and got “Sorry, there is a fault. Please try again.”
No offence, but this one pegs a 43 on my B.S. meter, but I’ll bite anyway: How do you know it really was OBL’s telephone number you had–the flowery voicemail greeting?
Notice that in the press, reference is occasionally made to someone who is reclusive, hard to find, does not submit to interviews very often, etc. Hunter S. Thompson comes to mind (of course now it’s harder than ever to get in touch with him.) Also J.D. Salinger was notorious and your referent, Neil Armstrong. The point is that people who collect phone numbers, addresses, and contacts for a living often use them, curry them to find more, and in general use their initiative, creativity, and other resources to locate sources. If there were a website that would get you these connections, the entire field would be pretty empty, uninteresting, and flaccid, I’d think.
Slightly aside from the thrust of the OP, I think Cecil had his tongue firmly in cheek when saying he hadn’t tried to contact Neil Armstrong. The guy is well-known to be thoroughly reclusive. (Armstrong, not Cecil…)
Many organizations and employers, although they won’t give out someone’s home phone number, will agree to pass on a message. I have contacted several authors, for example, by asking their publisher to give the author my name, email address or phone number, and reason for contacting them.
If I needed to get in touch with Neil Armstrong for an article I was writing, I would contact NASA and send a short note with a compelling reason for him to call me.
As a newspaperman (I hate the word “journalist” - people like Bill O’ and Geraldo call themselves that) there are a number of methods to use. In fact these days with Google and similar services, it is much easier than it used to be.
I would Google the name I would be interested in. Then call information for the last listed town the person was in.
If that was not fruitful, I would then call the the writer of the most recent story listed. Then possibly a newspaperman in the last town listed, but probably the last writer would have some idea.
I then would call the county clerk and/or city clerk of the last listed town or of the town that the other sources gave me.
I will say that most people who have done something noteworthy, like both your examples, generally have a pretty good trail of ink behind them. Once they are in the public eye they will return again and again. A couple of months ago I ran down a relatively minor New Zealand Olympian who it turned out is now an assistant high school principal in New Mexicio for a story. In the old days it would have probably taken me around a month. It took me about a day with the assistance of Google.
All that being said, however, just calling NASA or John Glenn’s Senate office for a suggestion how to reach Armstrong would work fine if it were for reputable publication.
I have have interviewed a good number of notables (from rock stars to rocket scientists) and got the interviews by simply calling their offices which forwarded my request to them and they or their people called me back and set up an interview either in person or over the phone.
The thing to remember the old chestnut of “they’re just like real people” is pretty valid.
Of course, even assuming the number was OBL’s you can pretty much assume it wasn’t once it was publicised, given that a cruise missile would be sent to its co-ordinates within a very short space of time if he ever used it.
Not to mention that many people in the public eye have managers and PR firms working for them who get paid scads of money to pass messages along to their clients. (It’s almost enough to make me want to go into PR.)
Not to mention that many people in the public eye have managers and PR firms working for them who get paid scads of money to pass messages along to their clients. (It’s almost enough to make me want to go into PR.)
I skimmed the article you linked below. Unless I skimmed it too quickly, this is the key phrase:
“OBL stopped using it two months after members of his Al-Qaeda terror network bombed two American embassies in east Africa in August 1998.”
OBL is reported to have abandoned the satellite phone number in 1998, or 7 years ago You said you acquired this telephone number from a friend “two or three years ago,” meaning 2002-2003.
No you didn’t. It would have been three years ago, not long before they published the piece.
Come on - getting hold of the “world’s most wanted man”'s current phone number would be a bit of a stretch. Back then and before it got disconnected, you could leave a message though. For all I know the number could have been reallocated several times since then - I don’t know how the satellite number assignment works.
I’m a newspaper reporter. We use Lexis/Nexis and Accurint. If the “People Locator” functions don’t turn up anything useful, we run through public records – lawsuits, judgments and such. Sometimes that will lead to a spouse or a lawyer who once represented the individual. We also use reverse phone books, which list phone numbers according to street addresses. So we’ll call folks living on the block.
It is super, super rare when someone turns out to be double-secret unlisted. I can’t think of a time when I haven’t tracked down the person I need to interview. Now, that person isn’t always willing to gab. Which is OK.