Swisher succeeds by making more phone calls than her competition

Andrea Williams of MediaBistro.com interviewed All Things D’s Kara Swisher about how she covers the technology beat.

Here is an excerpt:

You’re known for breaking stories and getting scoops before anyone else. Which one are you most proud of or excited you the most when you were writing it?
I’m pleased, obviously, with some of the stories around Yahoo! and the different CEO problems that they had. I think one of the things that was difficult then is that people kept saying I was wrong — and then I was correct. So that’s nice. I think it’s the consistently being accurate that’s heartening for us on our site. There’s so much speculation and rumor mongering, that it’s really nice to stick to getting it right every time. We really spend a lot of time on building relationships. And so when everyone is like, “How do you break so many stories?” it’s because I build relationships. I do it the old-fashioned way, and I build sourcing relationships, and then I take advantage of those relationships over time. So, whenever someone says, “Oh, how do you do it?” I tell them that I make more calls then they do. I don’t think it’s that big of a deal. People make a bigger deal of it, but I think I just work harder than other people. That’s all. There’s no secret sauce or anything.

How can other journalists become influential in their own reporting?
Well, it’s really easy. Be accurate; know your stuff. I think what’s really amazing is that people just jump into it without any kind of expertise. People just start mouthing off on things or printing rumors without doing any checking, and they think that’s the way to glory. It’s the way to laziness. And I think the way to be an influential journalist is to be accurate and to be fair and to get things right and to really characterize things in an honest way, versus being really snarky or cheerleading. There’s sort of a happy medium between them, where you’re excited about some of the things, but at the same time, you want to give the reader the truth because this stuff can get hyped pretty quickly.

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