Teacher: Journalists who conceal the identity of the sources they quote stake their professional reputations on what may be called the logic of anecdotes  This is so because the statements reported by such journalists are dissociated from the precise circumstances in which they were made and thus will be accepted for publication only if the statements are high in plausibility or originality or interest to a given audience -- precisely the properties of a good anecdote  Student: But what you are saying, then, is that the journalist need not bother with sources in the first place
Surely, any reasonably resourceful journalist can invent plausible, original, or interesting stories faster than they can be obtained from unidentified sources
ignoring the possibility that the teacher regards as a prerequisite for the publication of an unattributed statement that the statement have actually been made