> would the person being bombarded by strangers be able to distinguish? If it's via email you could see the domain in the email address. Back before email, jou

> would the person being bombarded by strangers be able to distinguish? If it's via email you could see the domain in the email address. Back before email, journalists might contact people via phone, and I'm not sure if it's so easy to tell then. I assume the email/phone call/facebook message starts off with an introduction saying something like "I'm a journalist with such and such a newspaper..." > does it matter if they could distinguish if the person reaching out is saying they're going to put all their personal information online in an even more digestible format so that more people will harass their parents on Facebook Messenger? Do you think the personal information is irrelevant to the story? Do you think this is a story that shouldn't be covered? I think it's an interesting story, and giving some info about the characters in the story helps make it more interesting. It's generally considered proper form to contact the subjects of your article, so I would think it would actually be worse if the journalists didn't contact the people in the story. The purpose of putting the info about the characters is certainly not so that people will harass their parents on Facebook Messenger. It's not like they included their email address, phone number, link to a Facebook profile, or physical address. I don't consider stuff on my Linkedin profile to be creepy. My Linkedin profile is my brag page; it would be great if journalists were writing about stuff on my Linkedin profile. > grifting creeps. Are they worse than journalists 50 years ago? Would you consider all journalists grifting creeps?