I’ll be the first to admit, I’m not a good journalist. For the longest time, I’ve been some random guy that has a fascination and curiosity with WordPress and have used a website to document my journey. Somehow over the years, that’s lead me to become this thing called a journalist. A title given to me by my peers, not by me. Personally, I don’t like the title of journalist but I don’t have much of a say in the matter.

When it comes to writing stories, for whatever reason I don’t do common sense journalistic things which in many aspects, are just common courtesy. For example, asking for permission to use text in a conversation as a quote attributed to that person. Or, ask someone to answer a few questions for an article and instead of using a snippet, I use their answers in the form of an interview without consulting them first.

What sucks about these kinds of mistakes I’ve made and continue to make is that deleting a post doesn’t work. Once I hit the publish button, I must deal with the consequences if I screwed up. It’s depressing and gives me a sickening feeling in my stomach to receive an email from a person I quoted in an article asking me why I didn’t tell them their words would be used in the way that I presented them. In just about every instance, they’re in the right while I’m definitely in the wrong. The only thing I can do at that point is apologize, tell them I can take the post down and that I understand if my actions have burned the bridge of communication between us.

In an effort to try to prevent myself from continuously falling into this trap, I’m writing down a list of things to do (and print) or consider when I’m involving other people into articles I write.

1. Understand it’s my responsibility and mine alone to make sure the other party knows specifically how their words will be used.
2. If I tell the other party I’m going to use their words in one way and in mid-stream decide to use them in another, inform the other party of the change as it’s their right. It also gives them an opportunity to allow or deny the use.
3. Always ask for permission and never assume. Assumptions are traps and almost always lead to trouble.
4. Just because my email signature says everything is on the record unless told otherwise, it’s not enough for a lot of people or they don’t see it.
5. Never ever take words from private conversations and make them public through a post without explicit permission.
6. If the post is an interview, send the person you interviewed a private review copy of the post out of courtesy before it’s published for review. Or if you end up using a lot of quotes provided by them in a post. This is probably one of the most important things to keep in mind as a final OK from them drastically reduces the chance of getting a pissed off email from them.

Some of the things are repeated and for good measure. Many of the things I have in my list are common sense/common courtesy but damn if I ever think these things through before hitting the publish button. I feel like shit when I mess these things up and get an angry email. It also doesn’t help when the victims are people I know and interact with at WordCamps and other places. There are only so many bridges that can be burned before no one will talk to me. I need to take all this shit more seriously and treat the conversations people have with me with more respect.

If you’ve been a victim of my negligence, I sincerely apologize.