(I’m talking about white hat links from authority news sites and blogs.)
Fortunately, this isn’t as hard as it sounds.
All you need to do is use services like Help a B2B Writer (100% free) and Featured.com (freemium).

It connects people that need sources (bloggers and journalists) to people that want links and exposure (you).
And I’ve personally used them to build white hat backlinks from authoritative news sites:

