What Makes For Good Anonymous Tips?

It looks like last Thursday’s item about the arrival of Valerie Plame‘s memoir in bookstores struck a nerve with the anonymous tipster whose self-styled expertise was, as I pointed out, undermined by the book’s existence, because he wrote back to complain. “I always email anonymously,” he says of his equally lame follow-ups, “so I am puzzled how you found out it was me.” It’s really not that hard: When all you ever do is send links to wire stories, suggest that somebody’s going to get fired if a book doesn’t sell a million copies, or make the incredibly obvious suggestion that somebody might not make back all their money on a book that got a ridiculously high advance, you pretty much give yourself away—just like when you use a statistically anomalous turn of phrase that almost certainly emerged from your non-anonymous correspondence with me. (Also, if you’re going to criticize me for not talking about something in this blog, you might want to double-check, because it usually turns out that I did.)

On the other hand, a story like the misplaced cadaver in the NYTBR is a great example of a story that was submitted to this blog anonymously. It’s an item that came from a genuine insider who was privy to information that hadn’t already appeared in some other media outlet, and offered a credible perspective on that information. Also, a good chunk of the story checked out when I looked into it myself, which is always nice.

Anyway, that’s all a roundabout way of saying that if you’ve got a genuine news tip for GalleyCat, but you need to keep your name out of it, I can accomodate you. (And, of course, you can rely on as much confidentiality as you feel the situation requires if you send me a regular email, too.) There’s a submission box to the right, or you can just use this one here:

If all you’ve got is unsubstantiated slagging, though, there are plenty of other blogs I’m sure would be happy to hear from you.

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