What I need, my dear friends, is some prayer. Yeah, I know, Effing Conservatives is a strange kind of venue to be asking for prayer, but I didn't want to put this on one of my more common blogging places. Stuff gets around, the Internet is a hard place to keep secrets, and Renaissance doesn't realize how important it is for me to have a trustworthy, confidential source on the Democratic side of this investigation."Investigative reporting" is kind of a misnomer, as if it involved something other than regular old-fashioned journalism. Basically, "investigative reporting" involves stuff that important officials don't want publicly known, secretly disclosed to the press by people who know about the stuff.
Nothing is more important to this kind of reporting than trust: The source has to know that the reporter will not (a) report anything that isn't ready to be reported yet, or (b) accidentally identify the source, who might be fired if his identity were discovered.
Sometimes, the source is leaking with permission of his boss, but it's still important to conceal specifically where it's coming from, in order to avoid unwanted consequences. It's easy enough for a conservative reporter to develop Republican sources, but developing a Democratic source . . . like I said, pray.
The reason I'm writing this is kind of as a memo to myself. If Operation Renaissance works out like I hope it will work out, it's going to be beautiful. However, budgetary considerations require that I ask my friends to hit the tip jar. Renaissance wants to go to lunch, and . . . well, in such a situation, a gentleman doesn't want to appear to be a cheapskate.
Charm can be a valuable resource, so if you're reading between the lines, hit the tip jar. And pray.
To quote a line from Toy Story 2: "I'm a married spud! I'm a married spud!"
