You're navigating conflicting demands as a journalist. How do you secure access to exclusive coverage areas?

Some key aspects: Avoid generalized notions of trust. Expect to earn trust over time, and expect it will still be fragile. It is not some automatic-permanent thing that comes with one great interaction. Establishing rapport is more important as a first step. Avoid generalized notions that all sources are homogenous. Different people, when they become sources, have different types of expectations, anxieties, and prior biases against or for journalists. Merely because experts are eager to be sources does not mean everyone is. Genuine, non-judgmental curiosity about people's lives and positions matters. There is a pervasive fear of misquoting. Run your quotes by the people you spoke to before you run the story. Stay in touch after.

Expert sources like economists, social scientists, policy analysts, leaders of think tanks, etc., are different from regular people in why and how they raise issues. Experts tend to rely rightfully on aggregate data and research because they prefer robust theories and systematic ways to predict and explain things. Regular people who experience the challenges of terrible policies are not data. An everyday person's views from lived experience may authentically contradict aggregate data trend lines. Furthermore, people may even change their views about an issue over a longer conversation and multiple thoughtful interactions with non-judgmental journalists. A part of persistent inquiry is not to rush and quote people too soon.

Journalists are not expected to be ace domain experts. But this is key: 1. Get the history of how issues for your coverage topic have unfolded and which policies or predictions did not age well. And why. 2. Understand who has a history of speaking up for communities and what they have expressed about prior media coverage. 3. Deploy curiosity. Draw from community voices the necessary validation or questions to ask better second-order questions of experts. Contrast the realities experts see with the realities that everyday people see. 4. Then the stories tend to represent and educate everyone better. 5. People reading will know you are invested and genuine voices will themselves reach out when the opportunity arises.