The importance of keeping contacts

  By Jasmeet Sidhu

  Photo by compujeramey on Flickr.       

After nearly four weeks on my internship at the Toronto Star, I had been keeping all documents of my past stories in my drawer, everything from drafts of stories, to business cards, to crumpled press releases and driving directions.

However, although I am glad I did that, it was only last week did I realize the importance of keeping such documentation of your past stories, and more importantly, how valuable it is organizing your contacts for a past story so that they are easily accessible.

I learned this lesson, not when I needed to retrieve my own contacts, but when I needed some from others. Here are two examples from this past week. I was tasked to cover the Pride Parade this month and instead of wasting precious time googling names and getting generic office numbers for contacts needed for the story such as the head of Queers Against Israeli Apartheid, the director of Pride Toronto and so on, I asked fellow reporter and intern Jayme Poisson if she had any contacts from her earlier story when she initially reported on the reversal of the ban to allow QuAIA to participate in the parade. Not only did she give me a complete list of contacts that would be relevant for the story that she had researched, but in most cases, she was able to provide me direct cell phone numbers – extremely valuable in the case of covering a parade.

Another similar case was when I had to write a story about a tree clear-cutting case in Aurora. The story was assembled with contacts from Phinjo Gombu, a reporter here, who had kept contacts for this story from two years ago, and was able to provide me with cell phone numbers of lawyers and others involved in the case. 

Basically, in these two stories and I am sure more to come this summer, a lot of it wouldn’t have come together if it weren’t for the help, and the organization of other reporters to catalogue their past contacts for a story. You’ll never know when you might be required to do a follow-up for a story, when another reporter is working on something similar and needs some contacts, or down the line you would like to give them a call to receive updates or to search for new story ideas.

That’s why now this morning I’ve opened up an excel sheet, and have begun tracking all my contacts for all the stories that I’ve done since starting at the Star: everything from the junior pilot who died at a Buttonville airport, numbers for the family of the fallen Canadian soldier from Nova Scotia, Pride Parade, the mayoral campaign and so on. Perhaps doing this seems obvious to other reporters, and I am late to the game. But it was an important lesson for me as a young journalist, and I really recommend others to do the same as well.  

 Jasmeet Sidhu is a recent graduate of the University of Toronto’s Peace and Conflict Studies program. She is a summer reporter at the Toronto Star. Follow her on Twitteror phone her at the office - 416-945-8604 or drop her an email at jsidhu@thestar.ca