That's some fine jounalisming there

Wow, kiddies, be careful what you say on the Internet - it may be quoted somewhat out of context 6 years later! Yesterday, I was flipping through the newspaper at work (I'm supposed to do this for my position, don't fret), and I see my name as I fly by a story on the features page. I normally don't pay much attention to the celebrity adoration pages, but my own name tends to catch my eye. The article is entitled "Just say nOprah" and I smirk, then read to see what some famous Heather Weller has said. Heather Weller, a stay-at-home mom from Worcester, Mass., expressed her views on an Internet message board discussing Oprah's Book Club. "Does Oprah have some sort of mind-control device we don't know about?" she asked. "But I have to say anything that gets people to read is a good thing. It would just be nice if it also got them to think." Huh... Worcester, Mass.... snarky about Oprah's book club.... pro-reading.... that sure SOUNDED like me, but it rang no bells whatsoever for me. And the stay at home mom thing? That's SO 3 years ago! What the heck? So, thank goodness for Google. Turns out... it *was* me, go figure. I wrote that in a response to something someone wrote on epinions - get this - in April, 2000. Guess I hadn't updated the old epinions profile in quite a while, eh? The last thing I wrote there was barely in this millenium! (You can read the full comment here - they didn't quote my winking smiley, dammit!) I'm a curious type, so I take to some searching. Turns out this Ariel Brewster is a Masters Degree candidate at the Columbia University Gradutate School of Journalism. Who has honed her skills teaching "creative writing and literacy classes at prisons in California and New York." Well, good for her! I wonder if she also wrote that article about prison romances also available from the Columbia New Service. What amuses me is my little quote was the closer of the story in the original edition and in any other online references I've found to it in other markets - but here, the local paper bumped me way up. But, really, is this what graduate level journalism is about?? Sitting on your computer searching for something someone wrote (a tiny little piece of what someone wrote, no less) before you were probably even an undergraduate student (oh. my. god. am I that old?!)?? Is that really among the best anti-Oprah comments online?! I don't know whether to be flattered or annoyed, and I go back and forth between the two (and totally forgetting about it, too). I think my surrogacy journal has been quoted in some international media source at least once, too, now that I think back. I don't know why it bothers me so much that someone uses a personal website (or comment on a commercial site like epinions) as "research" but it does. Especially to just quote from it freely. I guess I'm relieved she mentioned this was something said on a message board, so at least it didn't sound as if she called me up to get a quote and I came up with that off the top of my head (or that I care enough about Oprah in general to be worthy of tracking down for a quote). But it just seems so.... lazy. I wonder if the journalistic community has developed guidelines on this. Anyhow... it was a weird experience, to say the least. If I were going to be quoted in major media, I wish it would've been over something better than Oprah! (Heck, I wish they'd quoted my more recent mention of her in relation to the Olympics! ;-)) It's funny, the local "alternative" paper (which is about as old as I am, and hardly a hip and happening wonder, but comparatively, well.... it all depends on the company you keep, I suppose. Anyhow, they have begun in the past year to quote from local blogs each week. Sometimes it's about local news happenings (there was a whole slew of them when Tatnuck closed - I wonder if the O'Coin's closing will make it this week... I don't know, Tatnuck wasn't around as long, but it tended to elicit more rabid affection. Perhaps booklovers are just more passionate than ass sitters who visit O'Coin's for their next recliner - that said, both departures are devestating and shocking, if possible predictable. In yet another example of Worcester never allowing for more than 4 or 5 degrees of separation, O'Coin's president is the husband of Rowan's first preschool teacher, whom we still hold in great affection. Um, wait, this wasn't meant to be about O'Coins, my parenthetical notations tend to take over sometimes. It's when they tell me to kill-kill-kill!!! that I start to worry.) Aaanyhow, what the heck was I going on about? Oh! Right! WoMag (isn't that just so cute!? They're all "outside the mainstream media" ahead of the trend of Brangelina [or Bennifer]'s and such with their two-words-meshed-into-one nickname), and their quoting of local blogs. They range from big local news to reviews of the latest concerts. Well, really, that's all they seem to have, I don't know if that's much of a range. Perhaps that's all Worcester bloggers write about. *shrug* So did I have a point to any of this? Do I ever? Hello, READ the title people, it's called randomness for a reason. Just because I'm trying to prove I really do take pictures of people with the new camera - Rowan playing in the snow last month (why would she want to pull the hood OVER her head??):