SmartMoney has a great article on how to use your eyes to influence people, win friends and improve your daily dealings with others (via Lifehacker). In journalists’ case, using your eyes could help you get the story and build sources.
An excerpt:
“The eye contact changed all that. I’d compare it to using a Sawzall for the first time, that moment you realize you could cut through pretty much any wall in the world if you had the right blade. With my eyes, I calmed them, slowed them down, and did so without knocking them over or humiliating them. I used my eyes to upset the speed and indifference of their routines and simply register my presence by asking them to do a double take. It worked every time. They didn’t know me, but then, suddenly, it seemed they did. I thought of it as a kind of dominance, holding them in the kind of invisible grip you might have once seen employed by a villain in a DC comic. I got discounts I didn’t deserve, a room facing the water. I was warned off the calamari and onto the crab cake. The desk clerk perked up when I arrived at the hotel and stood up straighter when I checked out.”
