If you are to be successful as an investigative journalist, you need to have highly reliable sources. This is because your success as an investigative journalist, more often than not, depends on the extent to which you can lay your hands on confidential information of a controversial nature. And more often than not, you need to have good ‘sources’, for you to be able to lay your hands on such info. This makes it necessary for you, as a person with interests in investigative journalism, to spend a lot of time ‘cultivating sources’. In this context, ‘cultivating sources’ means establishing solid relationships with the people who are in a position to give you the (often confidential and controversial) information you need to be effective as an investigative journalist.
Now the key to success, in cultivating reliable sources for investigative journalism, lies in understanding the sources’ motivations — and trying to satisfy those motivations. This is where, for instance, you may discover that some of the sources are folks who are simply driven by the money motive. Others are folks who are driven by the desire to revenge something. Others still are folks who are looking for meaning in their lives –perhaps after getting the impression that their lives are ‘insignificant’ and they need to be infused with ‘meaning’. This is where, for instance, a fellow who works at Walmart may develop a feeling that the paycheck they get at Walmartone is not good enough: that their life needs more ‘meaning’, beyond that. Other sources still are folks who simply derive their satisfaction from seeing stories for which they are the origin appearing on major publications…
So, in trying to cultivate the sources as an investigative journalist, you need to undertake a three step process. In the first step, you identify people who are likely to be sources for the information you need. In the second step, you study the people, to understand what their motives are – that is, what makes them tick, what drives them. And in the third step, you develop strategies to cater for those motives, so as to keep the sources well satisfied, and therefore to keep them coming back to you with the information you need.