Picking up the damn phone

As you can probably imagine, a lot of reporting requires picking up the phone and calling people. When movies or TV shows portray reporters, they like to exaggerate how some of these phone calls go. I’m not mad at them either because I love journalism movies.

I can’t speak for anyone else, but for me, it’s still a part of the job I get a little uneasy about. I can still feel that nervous pit in my stomach when I have to make a cold call. Once I’m on the phone, it’s fine, but the anxiety is always there beforehand.

It’s why I have to fight the urge to hide behind emails or text messages. Especially covering this beat. Sometimes it feels like I’m being invasive when I’m calling people to ask about gun violence, police encounters, or law enforcement strategies. If I email or text someone multiple times and they don’t respond, technically I can say “I reached out to them multiple times and they never got back to me.” But without the phone call, I wouldn’t be doing my job.

A recent episode reminded me why. I was trying to get in touch with someone for a story I’m working on. He’s a community activist I’ve interviewed in the past. I sent him a quick intro text.

No response.

I sent him a follow-up text.

No response, but he had read receipts on, so I saw that he read it.

Initially I was like, “Aight, he doesn’t want to talk. I’ll leave him alone.” He wasn’t central to the story, and other sources were more crucial. But then I was like, let me give him a call. If he doesn’t want to talk, he’ll tell me, and that’ll be it.

I called him, and he answered after about 2 rings.

“Yeah, I saw your text. I was gonna text you back, but I forgot. Good thing you called me because if you didn’t, I wouldn’t have remembered to follow up.”

That’s the difference a phone call made.

I don’t know if I’ll ever stop feeling nervous when I have to dial a new number, but moments like that remind me of why I have to keep doing it.