Recently I got a call from a reporter at the local ABC affiliate in San Diego to interview for a story about juicycampus.com. The questions hinted that the story the reporter was looking for was one of how awful and hurtful some of the anonymous posts on the site are for students. I spent 30 minutes telling the reporter what I thought, particularly how similar, at least from a free speech perspective, gossip sites like juicycampus.com are to more widely accepted sites, such as wikipedia, craigslist, and wikilinks, which also allow anonymous posting, editing, or comments.

The resulting story was a disappointment, noticeably lacking any mention of free speech. While this was not unexpected, I figured I'd share my thoughts, and a bit of dismay for the old media, here in the new media world.