What Would You Do?

What would you do if tight-lipped sources stonewall you? PR officers hand over embargoed materials to the Times and the Journal just because you write for a small college paper?

Charlie Sennott says, stop whining and go out on the streets and tell the tales of your home town. That’s where the stories are—not in the sit-down interviews with crisply attired UN ambassadors, but in a local smoke-filled bar where a rowdy team of Irish rugby players hang out after practice.

“If you are going to be journalists, think entrepreneurially,” Sennott says.

Because the Ancien Régime is over. The Holy Roman Empire has collapsed. The “old” way of doing journalism doesn’t work anymore.

So where does that leave us? In the Middle Ages, apparently. We have dragons to slay and battles to fight, he says. And we can only do it by telling true stories—and selling them well.

More on the money, later…