Contacting media should be easy as 1, 2, 3

[Commentary] The Community Media Workshop that lists office phones and e-mail addresses for virtually every journalist in the Chicago area. Should be an easy job compiling it, right? Not so much. Of the six major local TV stations — 2, 5, 7, 9, 11 and 32 — only one, CBS2, maintains a page where viewers can write directly to reporters and anchors via e-mail. At the other stations, the "contact" link on the home page leads to a drop-down template that allows viewers to write to general delivery at certain departments. The problem is that CBS2 makes its directory so hard to find that, having stumbled upon it doing research on Monday, I literally could not find it again on Tuesday without going into my browser history. Similarly, the northwest suburban Daily Herald has the most robust online staff directory of the top four local daily newspapers — it offers e-mail and phone contact information along with short staff bios — but it's hidden three mouse clicks away from the home page behind the vague link "customer services."