[mattboardman]

>people familiar with the matter said

Why is this line used everywhere in the news? What is the consequence of getting someone on the record for speculating the value of an IPO? It's the most frustrating and lazy part of journalism.

[solardev]

Sometimes people don't want to go on the record talking about their employer, for fear of repercussions. Employees have minimal protections in the US, and if you get fired, there goes your health insurance, all your prescription medications, dental and vision coverage, your ability to pay rent, pay for auto insurance, etc. We have very poor social safety nets and if you lose your job you mostly lose your life. If you're lucky you might have a couple months of savings, but even that is uncommon outside tech circles.

Not worth it just to appease some journalist.

[mattboardman]

Why not interview someone willing to go on the record that will speculate the IPO value? There are plenty of articles where they interview professional investors with knowledge about such matters who go on the record.

[solardev]

I think journalists typically prefer nameable sources whenever they can find one. They can't always, or those sources have had bad experiences with other journalists and don't want to bother, etc.

Keep in mind that journalism in the US is itself a very underpaid profession that mostly fails to pay a living wage. Journalists work on tight deadlines with minimal support and don't always have the luxury of doing deep investigative reporting. They might only have a few hours to get a story ready, and if no nameable sources are willing to come forward, well, maybe that anonymous one is better than nothing.

Source: anecdotal only, former journalism major, knew writers in the industry.

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Edit: not defending the practice, just saying it happens. Sometimes there are just lazy or plain bad journalists too. I don't know this writer and won't speculate, but in general it's not unusual to cite anonymous sources.

If we want to discourage that practice, it's not something an individual journalist can fix (short of cultivating long term sources). Most sources have no protection, and even real whistleblowers (like Snowden or Reality Winner) who are supposed to have protections are just left hung out to dry. For a source, talking to the media has a lot of risks and almost no upsides.

[null0pointer]

They use it because it provides an air of authority when the "person familiar with the matter" could be literally anyone.

[Civitello]

It is used because the alternative is to not provide the information.