home, give it to his wife or girlfriend or mistress. Tell her, “Here, if it gets cold it doesn’t taste good.” This at least gets her to open the front door, and that’s always an important first step.
Do you ask the cops to get food or something to drink with you? Do you make efforts to get the police to ride in the hired limousine with you? On a rainy day or when the snow falls, this is the perfect opportunity to send them from their house to the train station or vice versa.
Do you randomly visit cops in the morning? Do you take copies of the
Yomiuri
to cops who don’t subscribe to the
Yomiuri?
Even if you just spend 100 yen [about a dollar] to give the guy a can of coffee or a sports drink, that’s enough to set you apart from the pack.
If one of your cop buddies is sick, do you take the time tovisit him in the afternoon? If you just go visit him in the evening, that’s about the level of a first-year reporter for Yamagata [Hickville] Television. If the wife or kids of the cops have a cold, buy some cold medicine, some orange juice, and take it to the house.
When you have the night shift, do you always let your cop buddy know that “Hey, I’m up all night at the office, so if anything interesting goes on, give me a buzz”? If your pal is on the night shift at the head office, take him a snack and bullshit for a while. Instead of complaining that you can’t get through to the police when a new case breaks, make an effort to get in good with the public affairs guys so you are the first one to catch the story.
If you just complain, “The cops really favor the television reporters,” nothing will change. That’s the kind of whining you hear from first-year reporters at the Yamagata newspaper or even a part-time chick employed at the Akita office. If all you do is complain, you could have ten years on the police beat and still not win against the TV reporters. If you don’t know your cop’s birthday, use the branch offices, senior reporters, even employees at the local ward office to find out. Public utility companies also know the names and phone numbers of cops and where they have moved to recently.
Are you making use of the association of people from your prefecture (such as the Saitama Prefecture Native Association)? Even if you are a Tokyoite, join the prefectural association of where you were first assigned as a reporter. Use your police connections from when you were at a regional office to meet Tokyo cops who attended the police academy at the same time as your sources did.
Hanging out with your family and their family at the same time is the ultimate way to cultivate a source. Families that play together, stay together.
Have you ever taken your wife and kids with you on a Saturday and stopped by “because we were in the neighborhood”?
Do you get your sources to introduce their
kohai
[younger officer friends and protégés] to you? If you know a cop who’sgoing to retire this year, shamelessly become friends and get him to introduce his remaining buddies.
If you think this system creates a very cop-friendly, biased reporting style, you are absolutely correct. The Japanese police are extremely adept at manipulating the press, and we were extremely willing to submit to this manipulation for the possibility of getting a scoop.
The Chichibu Snack-mama Murder Case
For a reporter, dating is impossible. My budding relationship with my first serious Japanese girlfriend effectively ended with a phone call. Not from her but from Yamamoto, at nine in the evening. It was the first day I’d had off in three weeks, and I-chan and I were on my futon, catching up on some long-missed sex, when the phone rang. I had no choice but to dismount and pick up.
“Adelstein, we got a probable murder in Chichibu, and we need you to go to the scene. Get your ass down here in ten minutes. The car is running.”
I started pulling on my clothes, and I-chan pouted.
“I’m sorry, hon,” I said. “I’ve got to
Do you ask the cops to get food or something to drink with you? Do you make efforts to get the police to ride in the hired limousine with you? On a rainy day or when the snow falls, this is the perfect opportunity to send them from their house to the train station or vice versa.
Do you randomly visit cops in the morning? Do you take copies of the
Yomiuri
to cops who don’t subscribe to the
Yomiuri?
Even if you just spend 100 yen [about a dollar] to give the guy a can of coffee or a sports drink, that’s enough to set you apart from the pack.
If one of your cop buddies is sick, do you take the time tovisit him in the afternoon? If you just go visit him in the evening, that’s about the level of a first-year reporter for Yamagata [Hickville] Television. If the wife or kids of the cops have a cold, buy some cold medicine, some orange juice, and take it to the house.
When you have the night shift, do you always let your cop buddy know that “Hey, I’m up all night at the office, so if anything interesting goes on, give me a buzz”? If your pal is on the night shift at the head office, take him a snack and bullshit for a while. Instead of complaining that you can’t get through to the police when a new case breaks, make an effort to get in good with the public affairs guys so you are the first one to catch the story.
If you just complain, “The cops really favor the television reporters,” nothing will change. That’s the kind of whining you hear from first-year reporters at the Yamagata newspaper or even a part-time chick employed at the Akita office. If all you do is complain, you could have ten years on the police beat and still not win against the TV reporters. If you don’t know your cop’s birthday, use the branch offices, senior reporters, even employees at the local ward office to find out. Public utility companies also know the names and phone numbers of cops and where they have moved to recently.
Are you making use of the association of people from your prefecture (such as the Saitama Prefecture Native Association)? Even if you are a Tokyoite, join the prefectural association of where you were first assigned as a reporter. Use your police connections from when you were at a regional office to meet Tokyo cops who attended the police academy at the same time as your sources did.
Hanging out with your family and their family at the same time is the ultimate way to cultivate a source. Families that play together, stay together.
Have you ever taken your wife and kids with you on a Saturday and stopped by “because we were in the neighborhood”?
Do you get your sources to introduce their
kohai
[younger officer friends and protégés] to you? If you know a cop who’sgoing to retire this year, shamelessly become friends and get him to introduce his remaining buddies.
If you think this system creates a very cop-friendly, biased reporting style, you are absolutely correct. The Japanese police are extremely adept at manipulating the press, and we were extremely willing to submit to this manipulation for the possibility of getting a scoop.
The Chichibu Snack-mama Murder Case
For a reporter, dating is impossible. My budding relationship with my first serious Japanese girlfriend effectively ended with a phone call. Not from her but from Yamamoto, at nine in the evening. It was the first day I’d had off in three weeks, and I-chan and I were on my futon, catching up on some long-missed sex, when the phone rang. I had no choice but to dismount and pick up.
“Adelstein, we got a probable murder in Chichibu, and we need you to go to the scene. Get your ass down here in ten minutes. The car is running.”
I started pulling on my clothes, and I-chan pouted.
“I’m sorry, hon,” I said. “I’ve got to
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