Local scandal, absolutely. Racial clashing within the schools, you can count on it. Stories of depravity and child molestation go there by default.

Welcome, my friends, to the hornet’s nest. Witness the buzzing frenzy around the epicenter and behold the angry volume of hatred and discontent.

Although I despise journalistic clichés as a rule, there’s no better way to describe the gnashing of opinion that comes with ugly news.

Some stories provoke such levels of wrath. They become seething centers of rage and disagreement. They become like a hornet’s nest riled by some yahoo with a stick, and the clamor grows louder with each new buzzing voice that joins the fray.

There was a day when the voices of acrimony were heard only in isolated clusters. They rose out of bars where men and women debated the day’s news with emotion rising by the ounce. In the office lounge, in corner stores, at the downtown diner, different groups grappled with the day’s controversy with varying levels of fury. But those were just islands of passion and the sea of vitriol never parted to join them.

The Internet changed that. Today, when a story reaches the dubious status of hornet’s nest, strangers scream their views through words in online blogs. With the comfort of anonymity, new heights of agitation are reached until it all becomes one barely articulate roar.

In the online blog, typically found at the bottom of a news story, a person can vent his ideas behind the veil of an alias. Instead of John, Mary or Tom posting thoughts, Treehugger can do it, or the Weasel. He or she can vent repeatedly, can interrupt, can deride others with little risk of consequence.

There are constants in this system of anonymous debate. Some bloggers will become so vehement, they will have no recourse but to begin writing their thoughts in capital letters. This is the cyber form of screaming and it demands attention. But it is also considered a violation of blog etiquette and others will point it out, like hockey fans demanding a penalty.

“Turn off your caps, Nimrod.”

“I’M SORRY, BUT NOBODY WAS LISTENING TO ME!!!!”

Note the overabundance of exclamation points, also subject to penalty.

There will be incidents of grossly misspelled or misused words, the result of emotional distress or simple lack of education. Regardless, other bloggers will be quick to point out the errors if it bolsters their own standing within the thrashing community.

“If you want us to believe a word you say,” some spelling bee champ will point out, “Why don’t you learn to use spellcheck?”

It is priceless comedy when the spelling bee champ himself commits an error while pointing out the misstep of another.

Someone claiming to be a close relative of the accused or the victim will enter to wish horrible things upon every person participating in the discussion. Some bloggers will doubt that person’s authenticity as a direct player in the scandal at hand. Others will believe every word and will offer condolences and kind words, even if it means backing away from an earlier stance.

Minor skirmishes will break away from the main debate, like sparks flying off a firecracker. Blog posters who have never met in the real world will gang up on one who has tacitly been identified as the most odious of all.

A crazy place, the hornet’s nest. And I am often the yahoo with the stick that roils it merely by authoring the story in question. Such was the case last week when news emerged about a young woman who cut a young hockey player in the face.

The blogs went crazy. Half blamed the assailant and deemed her an unrepentant psychopath. Others blamed the wounded man, branding him a bully who sowed what he reaped. Another broke away from all that and blamed the yahoo with the stick, your lovely and talented reporter, for presenting the story in the first place.

“Just more crap from Laphlegm,” wrote the wit, forcing himself to new heights of cleverness to conjure a variation of my name I first heard in third grade.

As the girl-with-troubled-past vs. local-hockey-star blogs progressed, both suspect and victim were tried and condemned, praised and pardoned by the kangaroo court of the cyber age.

There were few rational voices heard over the grunting chorus of the lynch mob. And while this heated debate may be harmless and even healthy in some twisted way, you’ve got to at least give cursory consideration to one crucial fact: The men and women behind all that fuming could conceivably be called someday to serve as jurors in the very case on which they spent so much time opining.

A crazy part of the news business is the hornet’s nest. It’s both troubling and informative in that it provides a sort of barometer by which the emotional impact of a story can be measured. It provides also an alarming glimpse into the temperament of the readership. Are these raging people behind their clever blog names just angry by nature? Or are they attracted to the hornet’s nest specifically because they have been stung before and now relish the idea of seeing someone else fall prey to that discomfort?

Mark LaFlamme is the Sun Journal crime reporter. You can e-mail him at [email protected].