At 4.40pm on a Friday, a fire crew is still damping down a unit on the industrial estate, and you need one line from someone who runs a business there. The reporter who files first is usually the one with a name already saved in their phone. Everyone else is searching Companies House and hoping.

A contacts book is not a directory. It is a record of relationships: who trusts you, what they know, and when they will pick up. On a regional patch it is the difference between covering the place and merely visiting it.

Start with the patch, not the phone book

Before you chase names, sketch the territory. Draw three circles. The first holds power: councillors, the chief executive, the planning chair, the police area commander, the NHS trust board, the MP's constituency office. The second holds knowledge: the clerk to the parish council, the licensing officer, the union representative, the site manager, the retired engineer who has watched the town change for forty years. The third holds the consequences: the food bank coordinator, the tenants' association secretary, the shopkeeper on the parade that keeps flooding.

Most reporters overwork the first circle and starve the other two. Stories rarely come from the top of a hierarchy. They come from the person who has noticed that something is wrong.

Where the names actually live

You do not need a secret method. You need to read public documents properly and turn up to rooms where people already gather.

Documents

Committee agendas and minutes name officers, applicants, objectors and experts. Planning portals give you agents, architects and neighbours. Licensing hearings, court lists and employment tribunals are published in some form, subject to reporting restrictions you must always check before you write. Board papers for the hospital trust or the housing association list directors, budgets and the awkward line item nobody mentioned. Freedom of Information responses usually arrive with a named officer in the correspondence. Contracts registers, spending over £500 and registers of interests are dull and gold.

Rooms

Public meetings are free networking with a news peg attached. So are charity AGMs, business breakfasts, consultation drop-ins, allotment society meetings and the parish council's annual assembly. Turn up early, stay for the tea, and ask the clerk who else you should know.

The connectors

Some people know everyone: the vicar, the taxi controller, the pub landlord, the hairdresser, the funeral director, the school site manager, the Citizens Advice volunteer. Treat them as people rather than as taps, and repay the favour when you can. Ask colleagues, former trainees, trade press reporters and local historians too. The single most useful question in the job remains: who else should I be speaking to?

The people who have left

Former officers, retired head teachers and ex-councillors will often say what nobody in post can. Their knowledge does not expire when their contract does. Keep them warm, and be careful with anything they tell you in confidence.

Make the first call count

Say who you are, who you work for and why you are ringing. Then stop talking. Ask what is actually happening on their side, not just for the quote you came for. Promise only what you can deliver: never offer copy approval, and be clear about whether a conversation is on the record, on background or off it entirely. Note their preferred hours. Nobody wants a call at 7am from a reporter who has not checked whether they work nights.

If they say no, thank them and ask who would be better placed. That question alone will fill half your book.

What goes in the entry

A good entry should be readable in ten seconds, just before you dial.

• Name, title, organisation, and how to pronounce the name
• Mobile, work number, email, and the best time to call
• Ward, village or street, so you know when they are local to the story
• How you met them, and who introduced you
• What they genuinely know about, in their words rather than their job title
• What they will not discuss, and why
• Any conditions: not before a set date, not at work, never on the record
• The last time you spoke, and what about

Keep anything confidential in a separate note, and do not move it into a shared drive by accident. Data protection rules allow you to hold contact details for journalism, but that is not a licence to keep everything forever or to hand a source's number to a colleague without asking. If a source is at risk, or a disclosure request lands on your desk, speak to your editor straight away. That is general practice, not legal advice.

Keep it alive

A contacts book rots quietly. Numbers change, people move authorities, and a source who was useful three years ago will not remember you. Build a rhythm instead of staging a rescue mission.

• Log every call the same day, including the ones that produced nothing.
• Diary the dates that matter on your patch: council tax letters, exam results, the budget, the carnival, the first winter flood warning.
• Send a short message when a contact appears in the news, particularly when it is good news.
• Prune once a quarter. If a number fails twice, find the replacement now rather than at deadline.

One more habit: write down what you owe people. A returned call, a correction, a follow-up you promised and forgot. Most lost sources are lost for small reasons.

The Friday fifteen minutes

Protect a quarter of an hour at the end of each week and spend it only on the book.

1. Ring three people you have not spoken to for a month. Ask what is coming up, not for a story.
2. Open one set of public papers — the next council agenda, a board pack, a planning list — and add every unfamiliar name to a "find out" list.
3. Write one new entry properly, with conditions and the date of first contact.
4. Repair or delete one entry that has gone cold.

Fifteen minutes a week is roughly a day a year. It will not feel like reporting. It will look, from the outside, like chatting to people about their town. On the Friday the fire crew is still there at 4.40pm, it is the reason you file first.

Photo: geralt / Pixabay