In a post announcing the sale, David Rothman writes about Teleread’s future:

I’m leaving as editor-publisher, but Co-Editor Paul Biba (left photo) will remain—as full editor. What’s more, Senior Writer Chris Meadows (right), the second most frequent contributor, will stay. Both Paul and Chris have been e-book-lovers for eons, and publications ranging from the New York Times to the Guardian have quoted Paul over the years. Under Paul, who has supplied most of TeleRead’s posts since September 2008 and managed it day to day, you’ll continue to be able to speak up for or against DRM and share your thoughts on e-book formats or the Macmillan-Amazon controversy.

As for David’s own plans:

Along the way, I want to devote more time to reading p-books and e-books, not just writing about them. I may even perpetrate a few more books of my own. I’ll miss TeleRead and the gifted people who have contributed to it, but there’s no halfway; I don’t want to be just semi-retired from here.

Teleread was one of the first blogs I began reading about ebooks and where I first learned about the ePub format. That was a few years ago and I’ve been reading Teleread ever since. While I don’t expect much to change, I will miss David Rothman. He has been generous with his time in responding to my emails and considering news tips I thought he’d find interesting. He’s also a novelist, having wrote The Solomon Scandals (aff link), which I reviewed here.

I will continue to read Teleread on a daily basis and look forward to their insightful posts and great community of ebook lovers who comment on a regular basis. I’ll also continue using Teleread as source material for this blog.

If Teleread isn’t a part of your daily blog diet, I’d highly recommend it. Especially if you’re a fan of ebooks or at all interested in how digital technology is changing the face of literature.

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When I first began Brad’s Reader, my main focus was on literature and writing. Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use? I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”.

Every day (usually in the morning) I get an email in my inbox entitled “literary news” that has a comprehensive list of links related to literature. These include links to news stories, blogs and even current literary events like book fairs. In fact, I have received a lot of blog post ideas from that one Google Alert.

Now that Brad’s Reader has expanded into the world of ebooks and self-publishing, I created a Google Alert for those respective search terms as well. Bang! All relevant news and information in my inbox each day. It doesn’t get any easier than that.

A few easy tips

Setting up a Google Alert is easy. Just enter in a search term, decide if you want a comprehensive, news, blog, web, video or clips alert. I use comprehensive, as it includes everything in the email. Then select how often you want your alerts to be sent to you. I always choose daily. But you have a choice between daily, weekly, and as-it-happens (this one can fill up your inbox fast). After that, select the length of your alert email. You can choose between 20 and 50 results (I keep mine limited to 20 to make scanning the email much easier).

Finally, select the email you want your alert to be delivered to. This is a lot easier if you have a Gmail account – then you can manage everything all in one place without logging in and out of multiple accounts. I use one account for my Gmail, Google Reader, News, Google Alerts and Notebooks. Keep it simple.

The sky is the limit to what your alert can be. Here are a few suggestions for you regular readers of this blog:

• Literary news
• Self publishing
• ebooks
• Your favorite author
• A specific publisher/e-retailer (great to keep track of the current Amazon v. Macmillan feud)
• publishing news
• fill-in-your-own-preference-here

Google Alerts are a great way to stay informed about your topic of choice without spending countless hours scouring the web for important information. For me, this has been an invaluable tool and has really helped me grow Brad’s Reader. I hope Google Alerts can help you too.

Update 2/7: In a bit of irony, when I got my Google Alert for ‘literary news’ this morning, I was pleasantly surprised to see this very post listed under the blog section:

Keeping up with the world of publishing & ebooks | Brad’s Reader
By Brad Vertrees
Since the world of literature is so big, I needed a way to see all the
important bits of news and related blog posts at-a-glance. What did I use?
I created a Google Alert using the search term “literary news”. …
<http://www.bradsreader.com/2010/02/keeping-up-with-the-world-of-publishing-ebooks/>
Brad’s Reader
<http://www.bradsreader.com/>

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For the last year or so (maybe even longer) there have been rumors that Apple would eventually release a tablet device. That day has come. At first glace, iPad is a beefed up version of the iPhone/iPod Touch. But under the hood the iPad is impressive. I want onto the MacRumors blog and here’s what they had to say:

At today’s highly-anticipated media event, Apple announced the iPad tablet device, featuring a 9.7-inch, 1024 x 768 display and 16 GB, 32 GB, and 64 GB capacities. Carrying a custom 1 GHz “Apple A4″ chip, the iPad weighs in at 1.5 pounds and is .5-inch thin. The iPad will be priced at $499, $599, and $699 for the varying capacity models without 3G, and $626, $729, and $829 with 3G.

The price surprised me, since everyone was speculating that the price point for the iPad would be around $999, the same price as Apple’s basic Macbook. The entry price for a basic unit is $499. This is just a little more expensive than the Kindle DX and about double the basic Kindle price. However, given the number of features the iPad sports, those considering the Kindle might be better off with a multi-use device.

For the sake of comparison, the Sony Daily Edition Reader comes in at $399 and the Barnes & Noble Nook is priced at $259. How will the iPad affect the sales of those dedicated e-readers? Only time will tell.

I think the most exciting thing about the iPad is the built in iBooks app – which allows you to buy, download and read ebooks. Before the release today, Apple had been busy negotiating with some of the larger publishing houses to make their books available on the iPad. If you watch the demo video on Apple’s website, you’ll see that the device renders the text beautifully and the page turning (with the swipe of a finger) is very realistic.

Dedicated or Multi-use?

This is the big question ebook enthusiasts and anyone looking to get into the ebook game now face. I’ll admit that I love my dedicated Sony Pocket Edition. No distractions. Just pure reading. Yes, I do read ebooks on my iPhone as well, but not nearly as many and my reading sessions are much shorter.

There’s also a good argument for multi-use devices like the iPad. It’s an all-in-one device (except for the phone) where you can manage your entire digital life from the tablet. The virtual keyboard is almost the size of a laptop keyboard, making typing emails, notes, working on your novel much easier. But again, all these other features can be distracting – especially when checking email or blog stats is one click away.

Will iPad revolutionize ebook reading?

It might be too soon to tell how the iPad will affect ebooks. Before the Barnes & Noble Nook was released, it had a lot of hype and people were speculating about how it would impact all the other e-readers out there. Now that the holidays are over and Nook has been out for a few months, the excitement has greatly dwindled and I really haven’t heard much about it.

This leads me to believe that it might be several months, maybe even a year or so, to see what impact the iPad has. Given the unexpected lower price, the iPad is now a much more realistic option for a lot of people. At the very least, I think the iPad will give the Kindle a run for their money. If Amazon isn’t shaking now, they soon will be.

ePub featured on the iPad!

One item I got really excited about was learning the Apple has chosen the open ePub format for the iPad. This means, in theory, that you can buy ebooks from Apple and read them on any other device that can read ePub (including my Sony Pocket Edition, Yay!). I’m thrilled that Apple didn’t create their own proprietary format for ebooks, bogging us down in yet another format and more DRM.

In the end though, I think that the iPad will make a great addition to an already impressive lineup of ebook reading devices, regardless if they are dedicated or multi-use. Furthermore, another device on the market means more competition, which means that we’ll see more advanced e-readers in the years to come, and lower prices.

For the record, I have no immediate plans to buy an iPad. My trusty 1st gen iPhone is plugging along just fine. And my funds are a little low to plunk down $499 on a shiny new gadget.

What do you think of the iPad? Are you going to pre-order one, or save your money for something else?

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In general, the publishers believe that ebooks strip sales from print books (of course, print books are more expensive) and that ebooks are so easy to pirate, they need to be loaded with draconian DRM to protect the financial interests of the publishing company and the author.

I think that these publishers are deluding themselves. Ebooks can help drive sales of print books and ebooks, in the end, are more profitable because of the ‘infinite supply’ theory. Furthermore, DRM has done little to stop pirates. DRM only serves to keep honest readers from buying an ebook.

So what goes on in the head of an ebook pirate? Are they rogue readers who refuse to pay for anything and get a rush off reading popular novels for free? Luckily for us, we can get some answers from the blog The Millions. They posted a fascinating article Confessions of a book pirate where they interview a book pirate, who of course stayed anonymous. What he says is fascinating and can shed light on on what ebook piracy is all about.

I picked out some important bits of the interview that I think are quite revealing.

Both print books and ebooks are prone to piracy

When most people think of pirated books, they think of ebooks. But that’s only half the problem. Print books are very prone to being pirated as well. It takes little more than a scanner and some time to properly format the text. Authors who refuse to release their novels as ebooks are frequently ‘victims’ of this type of piracy – which I detailed in the post J.K. Rowling, Harry Potter, ebooks and the definition of irony.

According to the book pirate, scanning physical books is very common:

Between 2002-2005 I created around 200 ebooks by scanning the physical copy, OCRing and proofing the output, and uploading them to USENET. I generally only upload content that I have scanned, with some exceptions.

200 ebooks created from scanned copies of print books! That’s a lot. This shows that maybe publishers priorities are skewed in the fight against piracy. If a print book is not readily available as an ebook, then pirates will make it available.

When asked if scanned print books or DRM-broken ebooks are most common, the book pirate said:

Most of what I have seen is scanned physical books.

This shows exactly what I talked about in my post about J.K. Rowling refusing to sell her books in digital format. People want to read Harry Potter as ebooks, but since they aren’t available through her publisher, they turn to pirated copies.

Just how easy is it to scan a print book? Not hard, but time consuming:

The scanning process takes about 1 hour per 100 scans. Mass market paperbacks can be scanned two pages at a time flat on the scanner bed, while large trades and hardcovers usually need to be scanned one page at a time. I’m sure that some of the more hardcore scanners disassemble the book and run it through an automatic feeder or something, but I prefer the manual approach because I’d like to save the book, and don’t want to invest in the tools.

There you have it, someone with a the right equipment and some free time can easily scan a print book and upload it for others.

Even pirates would buy ebooks – at the right price

Since ebooks are still in their infancy, the price point for ebooks is all over the board. Amazon is trying to bring some order to the controversy by pricing most of their books at $9.99. For me, that is a little on the high side. The book pirate agrees:

I do not buy DRM’d ebooks that are priced at more than a few dollars, but would pay up to $10 for a clean file if it was a new release.

Publishers are balking at the $9.99 price, saying it’s stripping sales of print books. Yet, as the book pirate says, no more than a few dollars for a DRM’d ebook, maybe a little more for a new release. And to stop downloading pirated books altogether?

I guess if every book was available in electronic format with no DRM for reasonable prices ($10 max for new/bestseller/omnibus, scaling downwards for popularity and value) it just wouldn’t be worth the time, effort, and risk to find, download, convert and load the book when the same thing could be accomplished with a single click on your Kindle.

Yet publishers want ebooks to be just the opposite: Strict DRM at higher prices. They are encouraging piracy. I have always maintained that piracy itself is not the problem, it is a symptom of the larger problem – not giving consumers what they want.

Downloading pirated ebooks is fast and easy

It’s probably no more difficult to download a pirated ebook than it is to buy one from Amazon or Sony (for example). With the right torrent software and a little practice, downloading a pirated ebook is simple and then one can convert the book to whatever format is needed to fit their device:

Since books are generally very small files, they can be downloaded in minutes. You can then convert the file using one of many applications, for instance Mobipocket Creator, to PRC or another format that works with your reader. You can then plug your Kindle into your computer and copy the file over. The entire process typically takes 5-10 minutes.

It’s almost a no-brainer for consumers to download a pirated ebook that they can’t find through the respective publisher. Or, if the publisher locks the ebook with ridiculous DRM and wants an equally ridiculous high price for the ebook, then consumers have more of a reason to pirate – no DRM and no cost.

In closing, I hope publishers are paying attention to what this particular book pirate is saying. They can learn a lot. I’m guessing most book pirates are like him, they don’t want to screw publishers over and would gladly buy a legal DRM-free copy for the right price.

Sure, their are pirates out their who get a kick out of getting everything for free and simply don’t care. Even if publishers offered a reasonable ebook at a good price, they’d still resort to pirating. But I’m sure they are in the minority.

For the record I have never downloaded a pirated ebook, nor have I uploaded a print book I have scanned. I’m not saying I’m morally superior to anyone. When there’s a book I want to read as an ebook and I either can’t find it through all the ebook stores online, or the price is outrageous (ie $20 + ), I have seriously considered.

Maybe one of these days I’ll do a video post showing just how easy it is to download a pirated book. But I make no promises.

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Personally, I would not pay to just read NYT articles online. I’d simply go somewhere else. I’m not saying a fee-based access to articles will not work. It has been quite successful for sites like the Wall Street Journal, according to this CNN article:

Among the country’s largest newspapers, only The Wall Street Journal has managed to continue charging online subscription fees. The New York Times abandoned a two-year experiment with the Web-subscription model in 2007, suggesting that the company’s projections for subscriber revenue were small compared with advertising sales.

The article even reports that some newspapers, like the San Francisco Chronicle have tried to push consumers back to the print edition by publishing print-only articles. Schemes like that are doomed for failure in the long run. It’s like trying to keep people riding horses and wagons rather than move to automobiles for transportation.

Paying for online content on newspapers sites like the NYT is not popular:

However, such a plan isn’t likely to garner much support from readers. A Harris poll released earlier this month found that 77 percent said they wouldn’t pay anything to read a newspaper’s stories on the Web.

I recently heard that the percentage of readers not willing to pay is as high as 88%. This is a problem.

Offer more than just articles to paying online subscribers

The only way I can see a pay-based model working for the NYT is if they offer paying subscribers much more than access to their articles. I’m not sure exactly what they’d have to offer to entice more subscribers. Exclusive videos, interviews and more multimedia content? But that’s already available to readers for free right now. The NYT would have to come up with something clever to get people to pay.

You tell me: What would entice you to pay for the NYT online?

Papers cannot subsidize print editions with online content

It seems that this is the strategy more newspapers are taking: Subsidize the print newspapers with the online version. This simply won’t work. It takes a lot of money and resources to publish a daily newspaper. The cost is much more than the online revenue can support.

One option that a few local papers are trying is to get rid of the print edition altogether. This eliminates the cost of printing, delivery and paper supplies. But I highly doubt a paper like the NYT would take such a blod move.

Are readers entitled to free online content?

This question has come up a lot lately in the various blogs I read. There is a vocal group out there that say that, no, readers aren’t entitled to anything for free. We should just accept that we’re going to have to pay for digital content just as we’d pay for print content.

I’d beg to differ. Readers are the market for the various news outlets out there. If the market demands free digital content, then providers like the NYT need to pay attention or readers will go elsewhere. While I don’t have the answers for the NYT about how to accomplish this and still bring in money, it’s something they need to figure out, and fast.

Some might argue that if readers must pay for other types of digital content like ebooks, then why can’t we pay to read the paper online? My answer is that ebooks are a unique product, while newspapers publish news that is distributed via multiple outlets and is generally available to everyone.

This is a complicated issue and there are no easy answers. What do you think? Is it a good idea for the NYT to charge online readers? Or do they need to find some other source of revenue? Share your thoughts below and leave a comment.

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There’s one new literary magazine start-up that is helping take literature into the future. The quarterly publication is called Electric Literature Magazine. They are using more than just ebooks to help sell literature to a wider and more diverse audience.

What makes Electric Literature Magazine so unique? It’s not just the ebooks, which they make available on every platform possible, like the Kindle and the iPhone. According to this New York Times article, the magazine goes far beyond selling ebooks:

…they allow readers to enjoy the magazine any way they like: on paper, Kindle, e-book, iPhone and, starting next month, as an audiobook. YouTube videos feature collaborations among their writers and visual artists and musicians. Starting next month, Rick Moody will tweet a story over three days.

The article goes on to explain that this kind of new marketing has created quite the online buzz. This buzz has given the magazine a lot of exposure, and not just on the blogosphere:

With a debut issue in June and an autumn issue out last week, each consisting of five stories, the magazine has racked up complimentary reviews everywhere from The Washington Post to a blogger on Destructive Anachronism, who wrote, “High quality content + innovative marketing + multimedia could just equal the new model for literature, post-print.”

‘Post-print’ is a good term, and one we will likely hear more and more in the coming years.

A new age for short fiction

Electric Literature Magazine publishes short fiction (one of my favorite literary forms). It wasn’t that long ago when everyone wrote the short story off as a dead form. Magazines were only paying pennies on the dollar for a short story. And forget about getting a collection of stories printed by a large publishing house. In other words, the short story had been laid to rest in the grave and the literary world was throwing dirt on its casket.

Not anymore. I, along with a lot of others, have claimed that short fiction is making a renaissance because of the ebook. Short fiction is more accessible than ever before and authors are self-publishing their own works on websites like Smashwords, thus reaping more profits.

For example, I’m downloading short fiction onto my Sony Reader Pocket Edition from sites like Smashwords. The experience is great. I get a chance to read a diverse range of authors who write a very diverse range of fiction while not paying for an expensive print publication or anthology of short fiction. And more importantly, I’m still supporting these authors by paying the prices they set for their work.

Electric Literature Magazine – making literature exciting again

I’ve always found that literature is exciting. That’s just me. But in an era of incredibly short attention spans due to television, video games, and yes even the internet, it is hard to get people to sit down and enjoy a work of fiction with all these other distractions. By relying on multiple forms of media like YouTube videos, the Electric Literature Magazine is taking the ‘homework’ feel out of reading:

One thing Electric Literature seems good at is getting people to read serious literature, making it less like homework. As Sara Nelson, the books director of O, the Oprah Magazine, and former editor in chief of Publishers Weekly, said, “Anything that takes the starch out — go for it.”

Some might say this is somehow cheapening literature. I tend to think like Sara Nelson from the above quote, anything that gets people reading and away from the television is a great thing.

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Publishing guru Joe Wikert, in his own blog post How the Kindle prevents eContent from evolving says that devices like the Kindle are hurting digital content by limiting themselves to just reading:

The problem with these devices is that they encourage quick print-to-e content conversion and nothing more.  In fact, they even discourage some of the simplest ways of enhancing print-to-e conversions.

He goes on to say:

The irony is that although the Kindle was the first to include wireless functionality, that feature is really only good for one thing: buying content from Amazon.  Every other time I’ve used the “experimental” browser I’ve been disappointed.  That’s because, at its heart, the Kindle is a reader and it doesn’t encourage any other use.

On one hand, I understand where Joe is coming from. Enhancing literature with links to more information can really illuminate a text in ways that has never been possible before. And that’s great! But Joe takes it a step further:

Are you really thrilled with the content that’s available on today’s dedicated e-readers?  I’m not.  And it’s not just color and video that I crave.  I want to see a major leap forward, like when entertainment went from radio to TV, for example.

Color I can understand, especially for reading comic books. But video? The whole purpose for me to sit down with a book is to get away from television, the internet, YouTube and so forth. The last thing I want embedded in my eReader is video. Too much of a distraction for my tastes.

Like I said in my earlier posts, multifunctional devices are great, but not for everyone. Yes, I love my iPhone and read plenty of digital content on it. For my serious reading though, I turn to my no-frills Sony Pocket Edition.

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According to this Publishers Weekly article where I first read about Gaiman’s plans, the Twitter short story will begin tomorrow October 13. If you’re interested in a possible contribution to a famous author’s work, you can follow Gaiman on Twitter and write your 140 character contribution to his newest endeavor. You’ll be in crowded company, though, because Gaiman has well over 1 million followers!

In theory this sounds like a great idea.  However, there are risks. As this Entertainment Weekly article points out, the story could be thrown into a garbage bin of bad tweets that don’t follow any sort of narrative:

It’ll be interesting to see if average Twitterzens will be able to maintain a functioning narrative in this mass game of exquisite corpse, or if it will inevitably devolve into “And then a comet hit the planet and everybody died!” or “A giant poo-monster came out of nowhere and swallowed dear Esmeralda whole,” as mine always did.

With the world of Twitter so crowded, and Gaiman’s huge fanbase, I can see this easily turning into a complete disaster. Or, it will take a great deal of editing to turn all those tweets into a cohesive narrative. The latter is almost guaranteed. Either way the whole experiment will be entertaining.

Other people have written stories on Twitter and a few have even tried what Gaiman is doing. Though Neil Gaiman is a much bigger name in the book world, so his experiment will garner much more attention and will be followed more closely. I love this kind of innovative experimentation because no one knows when the next big thing will catch on.

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According to a post on technology blog Ars Technica the lawsuit has been settled because the offer made by Amazon to all customers affected by the deletion is enough that the lawsuit is no longer worth pursuing:

In a series of stipulations, the parties agree that the new refund offer left Gawronski feeling he no longer had a case: “Plaintiffs believe they would not likely be able to certify classes under Rule 23(b)(3) because of Amazon’s offer to fully reimburse affected consumers for all Subject Works previously removed by Amazon from Devices and to restore notes and annotations.”

Additionally, Amazon also changed its deletion policy to terms that are much more detailed and only lets Amazon delete content under very strict conditions:

Amazon’s attorneys agreed to legally binding terms that describe its content deletion policy. When it comes to blog and periodical content, as well as software, Amazon retains the right to perform a remote delete. But when it comes to books, deletions will only occur under a limited number of circumstances: failed credit card transactions, judicial orders, malware, or the permission of the user.

It should also be noted that Amazon will be paying Gawronski’s legal fees.

I think the incident has finally been laid to rest, and Amazon is happy to have the embarrassing event behind them. However, a part of me also thinks the lawsuit should have gone forward, not for any financial gains on behalf of the plaintiffs, but to set a legal precident that taking something back after it has been legally purchased is a big no-no. This assumes that Amazon loses the lawsuit.

But such a precident would be important in keeping other digital content providers from trying to get away with the same tactics Amazon used. Furthermore, it’d make it more difficult (at least here in the United States) for Amazon to be forced to delete content based on political or religious grounds.

Because I feel bad about always badmouthing Amazon about their Kindle (I still love buying physical products from them) I should also point out that Apple (yes, I’m a fanboy) has been accused of having a ‘killswitch’ for the iPhone and iPod Touch that would let Apple remotely disable third-party apps.

There isn’t a lot of confirmed information about Apple’s own remote deletion policy, so I’m treading carefully here. The only reason I can see that any company would need to remotely delete anything off of an electronic device is in the case of malware or viruses (not sure about the difference) infecting the digital content and potentially harming/ruining the electronic device. The only exception would be under a judicial order.

In other words, companies like Amazon and even Apple should treat digital products like physical products. Once they are purchased by the consumer, then that’s it – hands off!

Do you think the Amazon settlement is a fair deal? Should the lawsuit have gone forward anyway based on principle? Leave a comment below and share your thoughts.

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My first post on this story Why is Barnes & Noble dictating what authors should have on their website was fairly cautious, as I wanted to avoid adding fuel to a possible rumor (and there are plenty of them on the web). But this story has gained a lot of traction and is disturbing both in its truth and implications for authors.

After my original post on this subject, I was alerted via email from the PulsePoint Design blog that according to a top literary agent, authors must link to the B&N website for them to even consider ordering their books:

If an author or publisher wants their book to be considered for purchase by these major chains, a link to the bookseller must be featured on the author’s web site.

A threat like this is a classic case of blackmail. And we’re not talking small cookies either. Barnes & Noble has huge buying power and any publisher and author who want a national presence for their book/s, must deal with this chain. The real question now is, can a demand like this stick?

In fact, the trade sales manager at one publishing house laughed when I told him what I knew.  He claimed the policy is completely unenforceable, a flagrant violation of antitrust laws, and that booksellers can never make this initiative stick.

I’m a little skeptical about any government agency stepping in to stop a practice like this. Unless an author and/or publisher files a lawsuit, there’s little chance the government will step in.

Even more disturbing however, is that Barnes & Noble is not alone. I have often criticized Amazon.com for some of their draconian tactics as well. There’s an article on Booklist.com that details how Amazon is requiring sites like LibraryThing to remove links to competing sites on their primary pages:

According to social networking site LibraryThing, Amazon now requires affiliates to “remove links to other booksellers on work pages,” or risk losing access to book data that the massive online bookseller provides to LibraryThing. LibraryThing, which has a community of 700,000 people, said it disagreed with the move, but was forced to comply because ultimately the disadvantages were stronger.

Since Amazon and Barnes & Noble are so big in the world of books; authors, publishers, and all these different websites have no choice but to comply, or face serious financial consequences. Even a boycott could mean financial ruin. Whether or not anti-trust laws would apply to either of these cases I don’t know. But one thing is for sure, this is a very sinister form of censorship because it’s imposed by private industry.

As usual, I’ll keep track of this story and anything new I find out I will be writing about here. Likewise, if anyone out there has anything useful to add to this story, either leave a comment below, or contact me privately.

And in the interest of full disclosure, I will say that anonymous sources have been used to verify the Barnes & Noble story. It’s important that these individuals remain anonymous because their careers can be ended very quickly if they are ‘outed.’ On that same note, I think anonymous sources are a critical part of reporting stories, especially ones that are likely to be controversial.

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