A couple months ago, I wrote an editorial about what it was like being a newspaper reporter in the mid-'90s. I can't believe how different my job was. Thought you'd like to see how that's changed over the years:

It was just over a decade ago that I was a young journalist working at the business desk of a newspaper. Looking back on it now, I can't fathom how I managed. If I needed to find sources for an article, I might leaf through notes I'd jotted on who might be useful in an upcoming piece. If I didn't find anyone, I'd ask my desk mates if they knew anyone. Then I might call a few associations to see if they could recommend anyone. Then I called directory enquiries - who knew me by voice - and asked for a phone number that matched a likely name I'd seen or heard somewhere else. I contacted them out of the blue and hoped they would be amenable to an interview.

It was an enormously labour-intensive way of increasing my personal network, and it involved notes, press cuttings, chatting with my associates and many, many phone calls. But that's the way everybody did it. Networks lived in brainspace and address books.

Who uses these any more?Much can happen in the space of 11 years. Now I spend my days alone in my office and thousands of miles away from the rest of FreePint's staff and our many contributors. If I want to find someone, I send an email or look at an online database or comb through my LinkedIn network to see who I can find. I know, or can potentially know, so many more people than I ever have in my life, and it makes reporting a different game altogether.

Read the full piece: http://www.freepint.com/issues/130907.htm?PHPSESSID=306