Confidential sources

What would you do? Imagine you are a newspaper reporter who landed an enormous scoop with a promise of confidentiality. Then a grand jury subpeonas your testimony and demands that you reveal your source.

Me? I go to prison.

All newspapers have is their credibility, and if they do not mean what they say, they have ... well, pages and pages of JCPenney ads, but nothing worth bragging about.

Now, to be fair, during my newspaper career, I never actually promised confidentiality to a source. That may be because I was writing sports, and nothing was so important that anonymity was required. Also, the newspaper industry continues to take it in the shorts from the web and television, so times are tough in scoopland.

But still, if you speak for newspaper, you need to mean it.