Jessica Ogilvie

So, it's your typical Tuesday morning. You've written a nice little article. You've found an adorable and relevant photo to accompany it, you put it in an appropriate format, you post it on your website. You close your laptop, take a deep breath of the smog-filled L.A. air, and call it a morning.

Three hours later, you return to your desk. You open your laptop again, sign in to view your article, and find that five comments have been posted. Three are friendly, one is full of grammatical errors, and one calls earnestly for your resignation.

How to respond?

Well, in my fantasy, I take sip of my steamy free trade latte, smirk with recognition, wisdom and wit, and fire off a snarky yet poignant response to the scurvy dogs. And listening to the conversation in class the other day, it seems as though I share that fantasy with many of my fellow students.

But are we that level-headed, really? Or do we, like almost every writer dealing with commenters, get emotional, decide to ignore rather than respond, and even sometimes get down in the dirt with them?  

Take, for instance, author Alice Hoffman. When faced recently with an unfavoralbe review, even she succumbed to losing her temper (via Twitter, no less!).

I'm not suggesting that we don't consider the broad implications of new media and the interaction it allows between writer and audience. But I am suggesting that the comment section, to a certain extent, should be taken at face value. It's not an exercise in academia, and it shouldn't be treated as such. Yes, there are some intelligent and considerate readers, and they may deign to jump in with a relevant comment. But in at least as many cases, the comment section is a public forum for people to rant, to join like-minded cliques, and to attempt zingers.

And listen -- there's nothing wrong with that. When the world is opened up to everyone for comment, everyone is going to comment -- and there are all types of people in the world. But we, as journalsits, should know what to ascribe value to, and what to leave alone. And we won't learn that by sitting in class talking about it -- we'll learn by fire.

The whole two weeks of summer session just became 100% worth it, thanks to Professor Suro's eleventh-hour outburst of rage. I think that's what I've been waiting for all this time.

In case you missed it, it was in response to the highly contentious topic of who we can have on the panel for our theses. I'm getting mad just thinking about it. Some students seemed to have difficulty understanding just who we were talking about when we talked about the panel. Someone from the School of Cinematic Arts? A non-tenured professor out of the Law School, perhaps?

Anyway, just to be clear, you're saying that we can get pretty much anyone to be on our panel, right? Like anyone in Annenberg? OK, cool.

I just learned the hard way that you can't pick any song willy-nilly and put it in your video. For instance, as it turns out the soundtrack from Oh Brother, Where Art Thou? has some sort of anti-embedding device. Crazy.

At the outset, you might say that the following isn't riveting footage. But trust me -- give it a few goes and you'll find that Carl is actually the funniest darn thing you've ever seen. I'll be crocheting if you need me.

The first time I felt queasy about using an interview, I had good reason to. I was talking to a well-meaning board member of a neighborhood council, and asking her to provide comment on one of her fellow board members. He had a high profile in the community, and was a contentious fellow. Within the first minute of talking to her, my source told me in no uncertain terms that she didn't particularly want to be quoted. "I've already caused problems about this," she said. "I really don't want to start any more trouble."

All well and good, and I could have gotten off the phone with her then and there. But my editor wanted an interview from her for a very specific reason: this was the source who would provide the other side, the one who would indeed cause trouble to brew.

So, what were my choices? Push her to answer questions knowing full well that she'd be portrayed as the bad guy in the article, or let her off the hook?  

Well -- I continued the interview, got the quote, and ran it. She never complained, but she sure as shit gave me the cold shoulder the next time I saw her. And in some ways, maybe I deserved it.

After all, as journalists, we ask for a lot from people. We ask people to say what they mean, on the fly and on the record, and then stand behind it publicly. Seems innocuous enough, something that anyone with a backbone should be willing to do.

But see, most people aren't quite like that. Most people just want to go about their business, keep to themselves and not rock the boat. They don't want to have their personal beliefs splayed across websites and television screens, and if we knowingly use a quote that was provided unwittingly, as Professor Suro suggested we do, we need to be damn sure that we know why we're doing it.

And here, friends, is where it gets little murky. Because, sure -- we'd like to cling to the good-guy journalist image. The one where we're speaking truth to the masses no matter the cost, where we're bringing down the Man and the establishment one Watergate at a time. But, really? Is journalism really quite that pure? Or is it just as ego-driven as any other profession? We want our names above-the-fold. We want the byline. We want the good assignment, the one that takes us to far-away places or to situations that will allow us to self-indulgently tell people what we think.

So when we use quotes that were obtained in, shall we say, a less than 100 percent honest manner in order to juice up the story, we're exploiting someone's reputation in order to advance our own interests.

Yes, there is some gray area, like when we're talking about seasoned spokespeople who perhaps should know better, or a true reveal, like a politician admitting to his part in a scandal. But when we're pulling Jane Doe off the street and asking her to hold herself up for judgment in the public eye, our obligation is to be upfront, to be honest, and to ensure that she's represented fairly.

As servants of the public, as so many of us like to fancy ourselves, gaining the public's trust and then earning it should be our first and foremost goal.

Photo by wadem via Flickr