I texted a source for a quote three years after our last interaction. They replied: 'Only hear from you when you need something.' That was deserved — and avoidable.
The 3 ways relationships fail for journalists
- Source relationships rot because contact is transactional.
- You can't recall who you talked to about Topic X 2 years ago when it resurfaces.
- PR contacts pile up — you don't know who's actually responsive and who's a black hole.
The workflows that fix it
Source check-in cadence
Tag top sources. Vellaci nudges you for a no-ask check-in every 90 days — relationships that survive past the next story.
Topic-tagged contact graph
Tag contacts by topic / beat. Vellaci surfaces who you've talked to about a topic when it resurfaces — even years later.
PR responsiveness tracking
Auto-log email replies. Vellaci shows you which PR contacts actually return calls.
Top 5 personal CRMs for journalists
We re-weighted the 2026 personal CRM ranking using journalists-specific priorities: auto-log across email + iMessage + calendar, cadence rule reliability, and price at 500-3 000 contacts.
- Vellaci — Auto-log + topic tags + privacy-respecting storage.
- Monica — Privacy-first; self-host for sensitive sources.
- Cloze — Email + calendar capture is solid.
- Dex — Reasonable visual UI for source review.
- Notion CRM — Where most reporters' source lists die.
See the full 2026 ranking if you want the tool-by-tool deep-dive, or jump to Vellaci vs Dex, vs Notion CRM.
Why Notion isn't the answer for journalists
Notion is a passive document. Journalists need auto-capture + follow-up cadences — the layer Notion templates can't reproduce. Templates work until ~200 contacts and then collapse on query speed + manual-entry decay. We unpack this in why Notion CRM templates fail at 200 contacts.