Quote Whores and Trained Seals
June 14, 2007Every journalist needs sources for his stories. The three-source story is the model, although abandoned in this LA Times piece on Tom Cruise.
Let’s say you were doing a business story on the new Apple iPhone. (A flood of these are coming.) You’d interview someone from Apple (”the vendor”), an industry analyst for third-party commentary, and an end user, a partner like AT&T or a competitor. Story’s done, on to the next.
Because reporters can’t interview themselves, they cultivate sources they can get to say the stuff they want, or at least interesting stuff. They usually have to have some standing as an ‘expert’, such as a professorship or authorship of a book. Some of these ‘quote whores’ are quite promiscuous in who they talk to, and often they’re promoting a book, their brokerage if they’re a stock analyst, etc.
Prof. Robert Thompson of Syracuse University is considered the king of media quotes: from 2000-2002, he was quoted 972 times in articles about popular culture. One poster calls it “‘dropping the Thompson bomb’- something you did when you needed someone else to say the things you were thinking. “
At the Enquirer, we had a group we’d call “trained seals.” Any kind of quote you wanted, they would give you; the standard ‘honorarium’ was $250 per story. The best were psychologists, usually a clinical assistant professor or higher or a book author. They’d earn their fee spending an hour with you on the phone, as you pushed them to explain “how your favorite color reveals your personality.”