PAUL BOUTIN — If you've got evidence of wrongdoing at work, or early warning of a shutdown, you might feel it's right to get the word out through the media. But before you upload spreadsheets to your Gmail account, think hard: The reporter isn't your publicist. You could end up looking as bad as the company.

Journalists are pinged regularly by people eager to share information without appearing in a story by name. But it's often a frustrating transaction — there are no clear rules for leaking to the press. How do you approach a reporter? What do you say, or don't say? What should you expect in return?

Slate press watchdog and former SF Weekly editor Jack Shafer hit SVUG with a quick-start guide for informants:

From: Jack Shafer
To: Paul Boutin
RE: background query

1) Don't leak from work. The bosses will examine your phone records and
your email account. You'll be caught and won't live to leak again.

2) Offer something of value. A reporter hates it when a leaker is
mysterious and says it's too complicated to explain in 10 minutes. Give
the reporter the document and let him figure it out.

3) Offer something of value routinely. A reporter likes a source that
puts out. Even if he doesn't do anything with leak #4, he'll pay close
attention to leak #5.

4) Be honest. Don't be shy about stating the self-serving reason you're
leaking. Reporters are worried—rightly—that you're leaking selectively
to punish your enemies and reward your foes. They're more comfortable
knowing that you're leaking because you hate your boss, or you think
he's destroying the division, or that you're outraged that the company
is breaking the law.

5) Don't expect the reporter to do with the information what you hope
he'll do. Reporters are hard to control. Plus, they often have
information at their disposal that turns your leak into a story that you
could not have foreseen.

6) Don't ask for money. Need I explain why?

7) Don't expect the reporter to whom you've leaked to go to jail for you
if he gets subpoenaed by a grand jury that wants the names of his
sources. Not all reporters who say they'll go to jail to protect you
will make good on the offer.

One more thing: Negotiate the terms of your involvement in the story before you start talking. Most reporters have a range of options for using anonymous sources. They can quote you verbatim without a name. They can rewrite what you tell them in their own words. They can publish data you provide, like the Pentagon Papers, without talking about who gave it to them. They can even use your information as a not-for-publication guide to go out and report the same news through other, more safely quotable sources.

But the programming interface to the press has, technically speaking, a sloppy API. Newspaper slang like "off the record" and "deep background" can mean five different things to five different people at the same paper. Skip the journo jargon and spell out your concerns in English: "I'm OK with being quoted, as long as you don't give our Chief Incompetence Officer any clues that it came from the payroll team."

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