Every time there is a big story our local TV news somehow finds a local person who is at the city/place. Recent examples:
Paris terror attack
Belgium terror attack
Nepal Earthquake
Canada Wildfire
How do they know local guy John Smith is there? Do these people call the station and offer to be interviewed?
They know that John Smith is there because the reporter looks in that place and sees him. They don’t expect beforehand to find him specifically, but they do expect that they’ll probably find someone. What’s the mysterious part?
They look there and see him there? HTF do they know who “him” is and where he’s from?
The OP’s point is that when there’s a disaster in (say) Paris, the local channel in Littleshit, Alabama will have an interview not with some random Parisian but with some denizen of Littleshit who happens to be in Paris. How do they find him?
Not by pounding the pavements of Paris while calling out “anyone here from Littleshit?”, anyway. They start their search in Littleshit. Someone at the station has a neighbour whose daughter is travelling in Europe. They ring the neighbour. No, her daugher is in Rome. She was in Paris last week. But, you know, she met her friend Marcia, who’s also travelling, in Paris. Maybe Marcia is still there? Come to think if it, I think she must be, because I heard she rang/texted/emailed/facebooked her Mom after the disaster to say she was OK. No I don’t have Marcia’s number, but Marcia’s mother Kathy lives over on Chestnut Avenue; maybe she could give it to you?
In Littleshit, Al, if they don’t already know one another’s business they can find it out pretty easily. Put out the feelers for a Littleshitian in Paris, and I guarantee you’ll that, if there is one, you’ll track them down in less than twelve hours, and probably much less.
Yeah, but what about when it’s a much larger place? They seem to come up with someone regardless if they’re from Little Shit, North Bum Fuck, or NYC.
When my wife and I travel out of the country we usually register with the State Department and local embassies/consulates. Does the media ever get access to that sort of thing?
Doesn’t matter. The journalists in any city will have a network of contacts and connections in that city that they can shake to try and find a denizen who is in the place they are interested in.
Don’t know, but I wouldn’t think so. Plus it wouldn’t be a hugely useful resource, since the great bulk of travellers (unless they are going to some particularly hairy spot) don’t register with the State Department. Even if you did have access to the State Department records, its still probably going to be easier to find someone by shaking the tree.
Oh, OK, I thought the OP meant “local” as in “local to the place where the news happened”, not “local to the newspaper’s service area”.
I lived in the NYC area when Superstorm Sandy was closing in. My local newspaper in small town Minnesota put something out on their social media asking for contact info for locals (or former locals) that were about to get smacked by the storm. My brother gave them my info, and I got a call from the reporter at the newspaper. Took me by surprise, to say the least. I talked to him before the storm hit and again a day or two after the storm. There were a couple of articles in the local newspaper that included quotes from me and a few other people.
The person from BFE phones home, and Mama calls the local paper and says “Have I got a scoop for you”.
When that Lake Nasser ferry caught fire and sank in Egypt, with hundreds eaten by crocodiles, I think in 1986 or so, I phoned a local all-news radio station and and told them I had once been a passenger on that boat, so they did a couple of minutes on the air with me. The news media will grab pretty much anything they can, especially if it’s an “exclusive”. But it’s too hit-and-miss to try to go out and look for someone.
I figure someone could call in and fake being at the scene and they would probably buy it.
A friend in the media once told me that people would call them, saying they were worried about their relative travelling in X, and could the paper find out if they were alright? So then the paper would look for that specific person, often by contacting the Embassy there, and would manage to get in touch with them. And then, of course, they use them as an on-the-spot source to quote in their news.
I expect that cell phones have changed this situation a bit.