Recently, I’ve had a nice little increase of traffic on my blog. With this, I’ve also had an increase in comments about what I write about. Much of it has been friendly suggestions, but some of it crosses a line. With that, I want to spend a little time reflecting on some of my decision process about what I write about and what I don’t write about.

Whether you are blogging professionally, or just for fun, whether you are talking just about things going on in your personal circles, or if you are writing about town events, politics, technology or developments in marketing, I believe that the Society of Professional Journalists’ Code of Ethics provides a very good framework to think about what to write.

They have four key points: Seek Truth and Report It, Minimize Harm, Act Independently, and Be Accountable.

Whatever you feel drawn to write about, a good starting point is to seek truth and then blog about it. If it is interesting to you, it is probably interesting to someone else online. With that, you need to minimize harm that reporting the truth can generate. The SPJ guidelines talk a lot about distinguishing between people not often in the spotlight: children, private citizens, those affected by grief, and so on, from those with a thicker skin like public figures.

Then, there are the extremely important aspects of acting independently and being accountable. This can be especially challenging, since I wear many hats. Some of my blogging attempts to be journalistic, reporting what is going on in the world around me. Some of it comes from advocacy driven by my convictions. Some of it comes from my role as the spouse of a lobbyist. My wife is a senior organizer for Common Cause. Her job is to promote ways that elected leaders can best be held accountable to the public interest. Some of it comes from my role as an active member of the Democratic Party. Some of it comes from my philosophical commitment to ‘democracy’, independent of political orientation. Some of it comes from my interests in technology, including times when I get paid as a technologist. Some of it comes from a wide range of other interests.

So, where do you, my reader fit into all of this? If there are things you think I should write about, or shouldn’t write about, let me know. I will decide based on how I feel the topic relates to the four key points from the SPJ’s code of ethics.

If you send me an email, I consider that something that I can write about. As a general rule, I will ask people before I quote from their emails, and won’t quote them if they so request. However, in special cases, I will quote emails even without explicit permission. My understanding of privacy laws is that if you send it to me in an email, unless there is some prior written agreement in place describing the confidentiality, it is public, and not confidential.

Most importantly, if you try to pressure me about what I should or shouldn’t write, it will probably backfire. I can be pretty stubborn. I will quit organizations instead of letting people in an organization tell me what I can or cannot say on a blog. There is an old joke about how to get a journalists attention, tell them your comments are off the record. Something similar applies to me and blogging. If people try hard to get me not to write about something, it usually convinces me that the topic is all the more important to write about. Likewise, if people try really hard to get me to write about something, I’ll look much more closely at it before deciding to write about it.

How about you? If you’re a blogger, what considerations do you have about what you write about and what you don’t write about?