WHEN I worked in my first reporting job, my colleagues used to rib me about how sympathetic I was to people who rang in with a possible story.
Sometimes the caller wanted to moan about the damp in a council flat, sometimes they wanted to tell us about their parents' golden wedding, or even a lost dog.
Some were lonely and appreciated a chat with a daft young woman on their local paper - even if it was to advise that we were banned from writing about missing pets.
As soon as I put the phone down, the laughing would start.
"You're not a social worker," my colleagues would chip in.
But it's funny, those same people would ring back, again and again.
Sometimes it would be to say they had some interesting background information about a current court case, or that they knew someone who'd just had their 13th child, or was at the centre of an important investigation.
So it was the young "social worker" as opposed to the reporter who barked to the council tenant about her damp: "Yes and how do you think I am supposed to help you?" who found her name more frequently on the front page or her stories in the nationals the next day.
I remained in touch with some of these people for years and they became the sources of some more cracking stories or ideas.
So what's the point of sharing this here?
Well I think it's good to remember that you never really know who you may be talking to when you first hear from them.
Treat your contacts well and they will help your writing career flourish.
Poor "people" skills can mean professional and financial suicide.
Not only do you need to build relationships (often from scratch) with people and organisations in your areas of interest, you need to cherish those contacts.
And why not cherish the editors too? Now there's a thought. More on this later.
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