This morning, I was subjected to an ass-chewing—and not the good kind—from one of my neighbors, concerning a news story I wrote last week. It was an experience that reminded me how important are the words we use to tell the stories of people’s lives, and that, no matter how well-meant a reporting, the possibility is real that someone is bound to take offense.

Often times in the course of writing for and editing a weekly journal that caters to the LGBT community, one finds that it requires the skills of a mountain goat, navigating treacherous paths and risking disaster at many turns.

There is a story about the playwright (and Marilyn Monroe ex-husband) Arthur Miller, whose Pulitzer Prize- and Tony Award-winning play “Death of a Salesman” had just opened on Broadway. Miller was walking around his old Brooklyn neighborhood, when he ran into a hotdog vendor with whom he had attended high school. The vendor asked him, “Artie, how you doing? What you been up to?” Miller told him, “Well, you know, I’m a playwright.” And the hotdog vendor said, “Playwriting, huh? I should’ve gone into that.” Because, you know, it’s just that easy.

Every writer who possesses an ounce of ethics and integrity (and a healthy fear of a just God) knows that each word he puts to page has power, and—in this day and age of online perpetuity—a very real and eternal life of a sort. (Take that, Dracula.)

I had occasion recently to meet a reader at a popular local watering hole. During our conversation, he told me that he had read (and thought well- and fairly-written) coverage in this journal on the ongoing story about Sidelines Sports Bar’s ownership litigation, and plans to move or expand to a second location (January 2, 2013 Agenda). He had also read a story about complaints from some Smart Ride participants who felt they had been bullied—intentionally or otherwise—by members of a competing team (November 21, 2012 Agenda).

In both of these cases, it was understood that some member (or an “angry member,” as the gentlemen who verbally accosted me this morning identified himself) or members of our community would wish that the story hadn’t been written, or may be unhappy with the way in which it was reported. Fair enough.

(Full Disclosure: A former employer of mine “enjoys” the dubious distinction of having his name included on the Forbes list of Longest-Serving White-Collar Prison Sentences; I’m sure there’s a great story waiting to be written that could include my name in the telling of it, were one ignorant of all the facts and context.)

There is not a single one of us, no matter how “good,” or “bad” he may be thought of by his fellows, who doesn’t roll his eyes when his name is spoken out loud or written about in a way that could be construed by someone as unflattering or disrespectful to them, or to their memory.

Several years ago, when I worked at South Florida Gay News, publisher Norm Kent oversaw the investigation of a local man who was presenting himself around town as the owner of a new local magazine, but whose list of unfulfilled promises was almost as long as his list of unpaid employees.

That cover story, “Dirty Larry,” was a hallmark of local journalistic investigation and writing, and it was written with a mandate to learn the truth, in this case because—the publisher’s editorial pointed out—the story’s subject was potentially or actually hurting people in our community.

We’ve always had free press in the U.S., and many of us who are privileged to write for our meager livings have learned to take it for granted.

I know and appreciate that not everyone will find value in a story that casts a friend or loved one in a light that could be viewed by the uninformed or mean-spirited as negative. It is when a writer reports on stories that risk such a reaction that he most wishes he was penning wedding announcements or greeting card niceties, trust me.

At this publication, we are never interested in bringing ridicule upon defenseless persons, nor in reporting about someone’s failures or missteps (except in the case of those accused of defrauding the helpless in our community, in giving an accounting of those accusations: Agenda, April 12, 2012, “Federal Authorities Detail Complaint against Oakland Park man charged in $11 Million Ponzi Scheme: ‘Rainmaker’ alleged to have Bilked Million$ from Wilton Manors Residents;” Agenda, November 14, 2012, “SEC Files Fraud Complaint Against Jim Ellis: Wilton Manors Man Charged with Defrauding Gay Investors”).

You won’t see reported here the failing grades of a business or community leader’s 12-year-old son or about “small” things that don’t even rate as journalism. In this pluralistic society of ours, we have people, on cable TV and on the Internet, who display no appreciation for that kind of finesse, who play fast and loose with the ethics of reporting for-the-record, to say nothing of an appreciation for common human decency. May such a thing never be true of this journal, or of its editor.