When it comes to the cornerstones of journalism, few are as crucial as cultivating contacts. Stories simply don’t exist without people. A journalist’s contacts book is a most treasured possession, built up over time and reflecting the many hours put into networking, chasing leads and fostering trust with wary sources. I recall being mugged on the streets of Bangkok early in my career and it wasn’t the lost phone, keys or wallet that caused me great distress but the passport-sized, pale-brown leather address book that contained all the names and numbers that I had procured so far.
 
All this makes the posters put up recently on the Washington Metro by investigative journalism outlet ProPublica seem a little like cheating. In the advertisements, a heroic-looking woman in a smart suit with a phone in hand stares into the middle distance, a slight frown crossing her brow, as if something of great significance were weighing on her mind. 
 
“Someone on this train has the next big story. Is it you?” the text reads, along with a Signal tip line and a website address.

There is no question about the need for truth-tellers in Washington today. The media faces many challenges from the White House, including President Trump calling the press the “enemy of the people” and launching lawsuits against many outlets. In September, The Pentagon issued new rules stating that reporters can only publish officially approved information, before backtracking to a position that merely threatens journalists with the loss of their 1st Amendment protection – slightly less authoritarian but no less unconstitutional. Meanwhile, FBI director Kash Patel made agents undergo polygraph tests in an attempt to find insiders that might be leaking information.
 
But shouldn’t contacts be made by pounding the pavements, working the phones and hobnobbing at diplomatic gatherings? Simply asking the next potential Deep Throat to pick up the phone and hand you a story on a plate seems a little forthright. There is an army of disgruntled federal workers in this overwhelmingly Democrat-voting city and you can only imagine that they will be very happy to flood the phone lines with their anonymous gripes and grumbles. The challenge for journalists then is to sift through the bias and the animosity to uncover the genuine tips about misdeeds taking place in the corridors of US power. 
 
This is undoubtedly a new era of American journalism. Trust in mainstream media is at a record low and any approach that has the whiff of vengeance will simply erode that trust even further. But ProPublica, a nonprofit, is an outstanding source of investigative journalism. It has won eight Pulitzers, including one this year for reporting on the effects of abortion bans. It has broken many stories, including the relationship between billionaire conservative donor Harlan Crow and Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas and the lavish holidays that Crow paid for him to take. When the administration is doing everything in its power to ensure that its narrative is the only one allowed to see the light of day, I must applaud any innovations that news gatherers are taking to make sure that the real stories are still getting out. 
 
Faced with increasing restrictions, ProPublica is finding new ways to reach sources and using all the tools at its disposal to uncover the truth. And if that truth happens to be lurking in the head of a jaded commuter, then I wish the organisation the best of luck in digging it out. But trust is not born in a text – listening to stories and being present matter, especially when the stakes are this high.
 
Charlotte McDonald-Gibson is a Washington-based journalist and regular Monocle contributor. For more, read her recent articles about the Maga-friendly restaurant in the US capital and US Marines’ unpreparedness for trumped-up domestic duties.