When journalists need sources, stat, to include in a story they're writing about, say, fall fashions, messy roommates, or whether food stamped with "organic" really influences your grocery shopping decisions, they often turn to ProfNet, the PR Newswire service that connects reporters with people willing to answer questions via email. But when Wall Street Journal reporter Amy Chozick needed to produce a story about whether Barack Obama's physical stature influenced the way voters thought about him, she created her own thread on a Yahoo message board to solicit feedback. And feedback she got — she even included one of the quotes in her article "Too Fit to Be President?: Facing an Overweight Electorate, Barack Obama Might Find Low Body Fat a Drawback." Went the copy: "'I won't vote for any beanpole guy,' [a] Clinton supporter wrote last week on a Yahoo politics message board." What Chozick didn't happen to mention in any of the article's 1,400 words, however, is that the note was posted to her message board thread, which she titled with the loaded question, "Is Obama too skinny to be president?"

"Does anyone out there think Barack Obama is too thin to be president?," asked Chozick to kick off the thread. "Anyone having a hard time relating to him and his 'no excess body fat'? Please let me know. Thanks!"

Some who saw the thread considered the question idiotic, and posted those thoughts.

Others, as it turns out, had a minute to ponder the question and submit a reply, like "onlinebeerbellygirl": "Yes I think He is to skinny to be President.Hillary has a potbelly and chuckybutt I’d of Voted for Her.I won’t vote for any beanpole guy."

It can be argued that this type of question-asking is loaded journalism — that Chozick already had the angle for her article in mind, and then needed somebody, anyone, to back up her thesis. And that's almost certainly how this went down. But it'd be foolish to think Chozick's reporting is an isolated incident; we're regularly contacted by reporters looking for quotes, and it's clear the article already has a slant and they're just looking for soundbites to fill the copy. (If we agree to be interviewed, we're always sure to qualify our statements, in an effort to make sure they're not taken out of context to simply support the reporter's argument.)

But what's really grotesque about Chozick's reporting methods isn't that she walked up to the plate knowing how she was going to write the article, but that she treated the viewpoints of somebody so out of touch with practical thought as equally as a knowledgeable source.

Perhaps, in hindsight, Chozick realized how foolish her methods were — which explains why she tried deleting the Yahoo thread. Too bad Google Cache has made it available.

For what it's worth, WSJ updated the article to include a note about Chozick's reporting methods. But the damage is already done.

[No More Mister Nice Blog, Sadly No]