Everyday Ethics

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Marisa Schultz of the Detroit News called me yesterday to talk about Mike Wallace donating 40 years of notes and other documents to the University of Michigan. First she wanted to know if this was a problem, if there might be some confidential sources about to get burned. We talked it through and decided Wallace probably went through the boxes first.

But then we hit upon this: When do you know to save your notes? Wallace must have had the sense that he was working on important stuff, 40 years ago when he started organizing and saving. We agreed that many of the reporters we know can't find the notebook they were using last week, let alone notes and other documents they used years ago. This was certainly true for me. I saved nothing but names and phone numbers, because it was inconvenient. Notebooks, documents and clips all eventually ended up in the garbage can.

Yet legendary journalists often have organized boxes of material that they give to libraries and colleges.

So how do you know when to start saving things? Do journalists start saving things as their stories and careers get bigger? Or do the journalists who posess that sense of destiny from the start end up with important stories?