I find I have to be more careful about having meetings with folks and then printing what happened. A number of the people I meet with are starting the conversation, usually when we shake hands at the door, that the discussion is "off the record."
Some, like a couple that I have met with this week, have assumed, and I have told them, that the conversation was really an interview for an article, and when I whipped out my Brownie Starmatic and took their picture, it was pretty obvious where the conversation was going.
Others, and rightly so, have been a bit more reticent. A couple of months ago I met with a person who told me when he walked in that he had received calls from friends that told him he was meeting with me. Seems I had mentioned my travel schedule in this blog and he was on it. It unnerved him a bit.
So I have developed a new policy. No conversations about meetings until after they are completed, then assuming that the person in question approves.
The advent of the blog has taken away the three or four weeks of consideration before publishing. Now it happens instantly. Good for some things, not so good for others. I have always though that a few days of musing before one puts and idea or conversation out for publication is a good thing. The rush to get a story out and beat the competition makes for errors and sometimes embarrassing miscues.
So be it.
JVH
