How contactable should a journalist be? In some local newsrooms (like the Carlow Nationalist and the Roscommon Herald), the email addresses of all staff journalists are available. This is understandable, as given their small workforce they would be highly likely to read anything which came into a generic 'news' address anyway. With a comparatively small franchise area, the amount of unnecessary email would also be comparatively small. But the norm in local newsrooms, it seems, is to just give out that generic address (and, perhaps, the editors'). See examples here, here, here and here.
Just as there are discrepancies among local websites, there are also differences in the approach taken by national and international websites too. Often, the addresses are straightforward enough (like joe.bloggs@X.ie, or jbloggs@X.ie) and can be figured out with a bit of guesswork, but there's still no way to be fully sure. Here's a selection of different news websites and whether or not they give out journalists' email addresses:
| RTÉ.ie | Generic ‘newsonline’ address |
| BBC News | Generic feedback form |
| The Irish Times | Generic contact addresses |
| Independent daily titles | Generic contact addresses for the Independent, Sindo and Herald |
| Irish Examiner | Generic addresses, divided into print and website |
| Sunday Tribune | A detailed list, but still only generic addresses for each department |
| The Guardian | Very difficult to find - a few generic addresses on this page |
| Daily Telegraph | Generic 'dtnews' address, different contacts buried within these links |
| San Francisco Chronicle | Writer's email at bottom of some articles, comprehensive list here. |
| New York Times | Click the byline, then follow the link to send a message to that writer |
| Sydney Morning Herald | Generic 'newsdesk' address |
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