Sorry, Sourcey
By Jenna Glatzer  

You excitedly take in the mail and flip through the shiny new magazine that has arrived. There's your new article! It looks great! Bless those art people! Hooray for them for putting your byline in a bold font and making your sidebars so spiffy.

And just when you think you'll never stop smiling, you actually read the darn thing and find out... some of your sources have been sliced out.

Huh? Your editor made you go back and bother all these extremely busy professionals time and again to ask them nitpicky questions, and the fact-checker called them again, and then their quotations didn't even make it into the article?

This is when a freelancer wants to change her name and move out of the country. You're sure the sources are going to call you and scream at you for wasting their time. You're embarrassed and afraid that there's some underground club of experts who are going to tell each other never to waste their time speaking to you again. You'll just steal their ideas and not even give them any credit in the article.

Of course it's not your fault. You know that. I know that. And experienced media sources know that. But somehow it doesn't ease your burden.

Sometimes it's a space issue; your carefully crafted 2,000-word feature had to be cut to a 500-word front-of-the-book piece because something urgent came up in editorial, or a layout just didn't work, or they decided the gigantic photo was more important than your text. Sometimes the editor just doesn't like what the source said, or the publisher hates the source, or the fact-checker noticed the quotation didn't pass muster against other research.

Whatever the reason, if you freelance long enough, it's bound to happen to you. You have a few options about how to deal with it:

1. Ignore it. If this is a source who just spent 15 minutes with you and probably doesn't even remember the interview, you might just blow it off and hope the source doesn't notice.

2. Tell the publicist. If the source has a publicist or "information officer," it may be easier to deliver the blow through her. Publicists know what happens at magazines; they're likely to be able to explain to the source that you didn't purposely waste his time.

3. Tell the source. Apologize and explain that it was the editor's decision, not yours, and that you truly appreciate his time and hope to be able to use your interview with him in another article.

4. Talk to the editor. If this is an editor you want to work with again, gently and politely ask why the source was cut. You may learn something that'll help you avoid the same situation next time; maybe the editor didn't like a quotation because it was too racy, too controversial, not controversial enough... maybe she didn't want you to quote a male expert on a "female" topic, or maybe she thought it was too much of a tangent. Don't approach the editor in anger; the editor's job is to edit, after all-just convey that you're trying to learn her taste so this doesn't happen again.

Your tolerance for this may vary; I would not continue to work with an editor who consistently chopped out my sources without letting me know ahead of time. At some publications, you'll have the clout to ask for pre-publication galleys; at others, they'll laugh at this request.

I've never had a source get angry with me for getting sliced out of an article. Sure, they're always disappointed, but most will not mouth off to you, even if they grumble in private. If you do run into the rare foaming-at-the-mouth expert, do your best to explain that editors sometimes cut what you think are the very best quotations, and that you're upset about it, too. Show a person that you're on his side, and watch the anger dissipate.

And indeed, do your best to use the "unused" interviews in other articles. You'll save yourself some research and get to make it up to the sources at the same time.

Jenna Glatzer is the editor-in-chief of Absolute Write ( www.absolutewrite.com ) and Absolute Markets ( www.absolutemarkets.com ).  She has written for hundreds of national and online markets, including Physical, Woman's World, Woman's Own, Salon.com, and Contemporary Bride.  She's a contributing editor at Writer's Digest and the best-selling author of Outwitting Writer's Block and several other books, which you can find at www.absolutewrite.com/jenna/books.htm . If you buy her books, your sex appeal will skyrocket.