Rusty Saber: Like column topics, key sources hard to catch

My latest round of mental gymnastics has to do with the process of selecting Rusty Saber topics. After nearly 25 years of writing a weekly column, it’s now monthly.

Logically, this should translate into a more leisurely selection process. Not so.

In the past, I perpetually operated in the topic-selection mode. In the event that I finished writing a column and didn’t have a topic in mind for the following week, I considered myself behind. The selection may have not been easy, but it was consistent; I never missed a deadline.

After putting the finishing touches on the February column, I had no clue as to the subject for March, a condition that persisted until the moment of truth, aka the deadline. This Rusty Saber is about topic selection. What else?

Pass on politics

In a previous column, I expressed envy of political columnists who write about political happenings of the moment. For the most part, these topics will be time-sensitive; columns appear shortly after being written.

While I envy the process, I wouldn’t want to write them because most writers allow their political beliefs to color the makeup of their material. Sometimes writers’ biases are subtle, while others jump out and grab readers by the lapels. Some writers go through their careers and never have a good word about the folks who don’t see eye to eye with them.

I may have political leanings, and I may believe those who disagree with me have something wrong with them, but I don’t want to force my political beliefs on my readers, half of whom probably would disagree and believe something is wrong with me.

Nifty news tips

The writers I don’t envy are news reporters. Some reporters may choose their topics, but most have stories assigned to them. Whatever the selection process, gathering data and rounding up sources to comment on the subject are necessary. Springfield Business Journal reporters perform a lot of this sort of story preparation.

It’s hard work, and I don’t envy them.

Be they writers at newspapers, news wire services, news magazines or broadcast news, the challenges to authenticate stories are equally difficult.

Not the least of the difficulties of building news stories is the reticence of sources to be named. This leads to facts attributed to sources who speak on conditions of anonymity. The source will tell all but without letting anyone know who did the telling.

Other devices to conceal sources include the often used “unnamed sources” or “informed sources.” The reporter might as well say “Trust me, folks, this information comes from people who are in the know. Sorry, I can’t identify them.”

When information has the disclaimer that it came from “unconfirmed reports from informed sources,” readers can presume the reporter knows the facts but can’t get anyone to speak on the record. A similar tag is “sources close to the situation.”

Neither is very persuasive.

Here’s another: “Because the matter is still under litigation, the source cannot be divulged.” To me, this means that the source is probably truthful, but if identified, the loose lips of the source might mess up a lawsuit. Or worse, jail time might result.

Since I know I’m not going to come up with a topic until the deadline is at hand, I might as well relax and wait until my back is up against the wall. Something will come to me. It always has.

Joe McAdoo is former chairman of the communication department at Drury University.