EXTRA! READERS TALK BACK!

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It can also be hazardous. Adam Bauman, a reporter for the Los Angeles Times, thought he had written a pretty good story about how a government-funded computer at one of the nation's nuclear weapons labs had been used to store more than 1,000 pornographic images on the Internet. When he later logged onto the WELL bulletin-board service, he found he'd been flamed to a crisp. ``Misleading,'' complained one member. ``Excrement!'' cried another. He got so much electronic hate mail that he had to turn off his mailbox. ``The impression I got was, `We don't want snoopy reporters in here. This is our playground, and you're not welcome,' '' Bauman said later. Bauman was hardly the first journalist to get beaten up in cyberspace. Every reporter who ventures there soon learns how prickly its inhabitants can be about stories that reinforce the stereotype of the Net as a place where only spies, hackers and child molesters live. Editors are also discovering that the information highway is a two-way street: no matter what they print about gun control, for example, a flood of angry E-mail is almost sure to follow. While few editors will admit to being influenced by such online pressure (unless, of course, it points out an error), most journalists are likely to take the complaints into account in future stories -- and there's nothing wrong with that. A healthy dialogue with readers can be productive, but it also tests some of the rules and conventions of the Net. Though the context of most bulletin- board exchanges is closer to that of a cocktail party than it is to a press conference, prudent journalists must assume that their E-mail postings carry the same legal risks as print or broadcast information. But the law in cyberspace is still being written. In most ways, however, reporters are finding online reporting not all that different from the old-fashioned kind. Many are even heartened by the belief that the growing glut of information in the digital age will make their job of sifting, analyzing and editing the news even more valuable. Says Bill Mitchell, electronic publishing director of the San Jose Mercury News: ``There has been no technological development that will threaten a careful, enterprising and accurate reporter.'' But there are plenty of wired observers out there ready to pounce on a sloppy sentence or a mushy thought and hold a journalist's feet to the fire -- and there's nothing wrong with that either.