Inlander:

It’s, increasingly, become a frustrating irony for journalists. Even as the internet has stripped away our privacy, the rise of the cell phone and the end of the phone book have made what was once one of the easiest pieces of information to find one of the most obscure.

There are stories I haven’t written because I could never find a way to contact a key figure. It’s one thing to say “Harold Sourceman did not return multiple messages asking him to comment on his alleged involvement in the goat catapult scandal.” It’s another thing to say, “we had no idea how to let Sourceman know he was going to be the front page star in a goat-hurling related controversy.”

Definitely an unintended consequence of so many of us no longer having landlines.