Plus: You never know who else she contacted. She may have shot you an email on a whim just hoping that someone with your experience would answer. She may have called every single reporter in Columbia, Missouri, and had a lengthy conversation with them. We can’t assume the details.

This is a deadline-driven, under-staffed profession. Requests like these should be expected. While I do agree that the student could have perhaps made a phone call, e-mail is perfectly acceptable for this day and age.

As you yourself said, Mr. Korte, you came up in the time before e-mail, so I can understand if it seems like a foreign way to approach a contact. But I (and most others in my generation) are perfectly comfortable with e-mail interviews, finding sources via social networks like Facebook, conducting Skype interviews, and creating videos to accompany print articles.

It’s a new time for journalism, for better or for worse. And we all have the choice to accept it and adapt, or resist change and become irrelevant.

You could’ve made an example of this in a more constructive way. It would have been a much better had you helped the student understand why this was not a best practice, had a back and forth with her, and then wrote a post about it. I’m sure it would have been received much better by pretty much every journalist out there (yours truly included) who has been in her shoes. Michele’s comments are all valid, but not in this context. The girl who wrote you is a sophomore in basically her first 101 “what is journalism?” class. Of course she doesn’t get it. She’s not a reporter. She’s not even a student in Advanced Reporting. Mizzou students have to take a series of classes before they even get to start working in the “real world” classrooms that makes it such a great program.

You have no idea of the circumstances here. Sure, she might be procrastinating. But maybe that’s the assignment … breaking news reporting that has to be turned around quickly. It doesn’t matter. Either way, she didn’t handle it properly. And neither did you. Instead of helping her understand that, you throw her under the bus. Must have been a slow day for blog post ideas.

But I do agree with one point Megan made: We’ve all made rookie mistakes, and I at least owe this student an explanation of why I’m not able to help and explain gently what a better approach might have been. I’ve now done so.

Cold emails are fine, I say, but as a preliminary. Could give you resources for further reading, or could be used to set up a time for a more in-depth discussion. Email questions are good only if your interviewee can’t afford to give you enough time for a phone/in-person convo.

When I interviewed people for Data Delvers, which Gregory cited above, the answers to the questions were only part of what I hoped to get from the experience. I wrote down questions before I interviewed people, but stopped looking at that sheet of paper after five minutes of chatting. These types of assignments should open doors, not create a pre-defined window.

And after you start to foster these relationships, then the real fun begins. Less than a year after I interviewed you, Gregory, I’ve launched myself into a job doing data journalism at PBS. But I only got there because of the knowledge, advice and friendships with data journalists that started with deep conversations that could have stopped easily with a simple q + a. But that’s not what it should be about.

And sorry for hijacking your comments section.

CAN YOU EMAIL YOUR RECENT ARTICLE “REAL ESTATE COLLAPSE ATTRACTS SHADOWY SPECULATORS. I CANNOT READ THE FULL ARTICLE BECAUSE THE PAGE DOES NOT SHOW THAT SECTION SHOWN AS “SEE HOMES, PAGE A10″.

I WOULD BE GRATEFUL THANKS