Why do we require a phone number and email address?

Journalists have tough jobs and deadlines, just like you. The only difference is that their deadlines are often a lot shorter. For example, it’s not uncommon for a reporter to get to work at 8 a.m. and then have an article due by noon—or even sooner. That’s why we need your phone number and email address. We need to give journalists multiple quick ways to get in touch with you.

Remember, this site is to help journalists connect with underrepresented sources. If they can’t get in touch with you by their deadline, they’ll just reach out to a source they already know—a source who might not help increase representation.

How do we protect against bots?

We have a couple methods to keep email addresses from being scraped by bots:

• Email addresses are not wrapped in HTML that would easily flag them as email addresses; specifically, a tags with mailto in them.
• We also convert the special characters such as @ and . to HTML entities. Although there's no truly foolproof method, we think these methods balance caution with ease of use.

What about phone numbers?

We recommend that you sign up for a free Google Voice phone number. Sign up online and then download the app to your phone. It is a completely separate phone number that forwards to your cell phone and allows you to screen calls (Settings > Calls > Call Screening). You can also use the phone number to send text messages and listen to voicemails.

Follow this a step-by-step guide to help you sign up for a Google Voice phone number.