Although I would be happy to be a proper coathook for any story Scott Rosenberg wrote, he might have checked with me before he hung his report on my words.

While it might seem a delicious bit of irony that a Wall Street Journal reporter who covers the Internet thinks of online reporters as boobs, I am sorry to say that it is not true. I have huge respect for online reporters and am impressed on a daily basis by their work.

What I don't like and never will is reporters who do not check something out before writing it as truth. At the conference, when I used the term "linkalists," I was referring to putting links for buying things into stories about products, like reviews. I was also making the point that there was so much stuff out on the Web that it was harder for the average user to discern what was quality and what was not, unlike traditional media fare, which is much more settled (some say atrophied).

I only observed that the easy and sometimes too-seamless links between commerce and editorial on the Web were something we all should consider carefully. I did not say links should not happen, but that everyone concerned with the blurring of the lines should think about it. And that users of the Internet have to be as discerning as they are with offline media (or not, if they choose).

In addition, the linkalist term was used as a joke (I think it was funny since people laughed) and I quickly followed it up by saying how much I admired work at places like News.com and theStreet.com.

I admire the work of reporters online, and I am fascinated and encouraged with the way the Internet is evolving. If I wasn't, I would not be spending my life writing about it.

-- Kara Swisher
Reporter
The Wall Street Journal

SCOTT ROSENBERG RESPONDS ...

Nowhere in my article did I suggest that Kara Swisher "thinks of online reporters as boobs." I simply quoted her use of the word "linkalist" as an example of a mainstream journalist's apparently dismissive attitude ("a joke") toward those online writers who devote themselves to providing links to their users, rather than using the Internet as a conduit to deliver traditional reporting. The value in those linking endeavors was the subject of my column.

Naked city?
BY RON FEEMSTER
(06/01/99)

Your article about the humiliating strip-searches that were routine at New York's central booking jail until a lawsuit was filed, has only reinforced something I've felt for some time -- that New York City under Rudy Giuliani is no place I want to visit. It's not drugs or crime or other big-city hazards that make me feel this way; it's the cops I'm scared of.

-- Steve Teeter

Surely you jest when you report Goodman's statements that more than 100,000 strip searches constituted a "bureaucratic" snafu. Nothing like blaming the "system." This comes from the law-and-order, individual-responsibility cretins that populate New York "law" enforcement and the mayor's office? Goodman says: "Sure we violated their rights, but they didn't suffer emotional damage. Let's give them a dollar." Such an admission is as stunning as it is insulting. I think violating citizens' rights is enough, don't you? A few years ago my sister (a former Catholic schoolteacher and nun) was strip-searched at Miami International Airport. She was devastated.

-- Jennifer A. Bell
Sacramento, Calif.

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