If you read the New York Times' style section this weekend, you may have seen a note regarding its Mary-Kate Olsen ashcan chic article:

An article last Sunday described Mary-Kate Olsen's fashion influence on young women, who are copying her slouchy "ashcan chic" style of dress. The article concluded with a quotation from Marina Albright, a college senior who was shopping at Barneys New York for clothes like Ms. Olsen's. The article should have disclosed that Ms. Albright's mother is a friend of the writer.

First, this made me laugh for various reasons. But then, this concerned me a little bit because while I certainly don't practice interviewing my friends and family members for articles, occasionally a friend will recommend a friend for a feature article. Is this verboten?

Not necessarily says Ann Logue, freelancer here in Chicago. "I know that some of my trade editors are so happy that I am able to find interesting people to quote that they don't complain - I'm often working in obscure niches. In one case, I ended up with a story that was almost half about some people from my husband's company, because they were working in the exact area that the story covered. I told the editor, the editor appreciated that I told him, but he told me to go ahead with it because the story was a good one."

However, one writer's experience with a trade magazine is not the gospel. "Having spent the last decade plodding through the newspaper world, I know for sure that using anyone you have a personal relationship with -- even a shoestring relationship with -- as a source is a big no-no," says Cynthia Ramnarace, a writer in Grosse Ile, Michigan. "You can tell another reporter, 'Hey, I know someone who would be great for your story' but that's as close as it would ever come.

"I think whenever you have a personal relationship with a person, at the very least it creates the appearance of impropriety. I'm sure that's why the NYT felt the need to issue the correction. If you have a personal relationship there is the sense -- valid or not -- that as a journalist your judgment might be clouded by not wanting to cast that person in a bad light, because you like them, or stopping yourself from asking the hard questions for fear you will offend. I applaud anyone who can completely divorce themselves from the emotional side of this, who can take off their 'friend' hat and put on the reporter one and never the two shall meet. But I believe that it is good to have distance from a subject in order to be able to see the whole picture.

"Also,if you are only talking to your friends, or your family, or their friends and family, your pool of experience is limited because if you are like most people, you surround yourself with people like yourself -- those of similar economic, racial and geographic groups.

"It seems that magazines, I am learning, do not overly concern themselves with this issue. Either that, or the writers are not informing their editors of close degrees of separation between them and their sources.

"As a reader, especially on a piece as fluffy as this NYT one, it might not matter to you who the reporter was quoting. But you can't have separate rules for features than you do for hard news. If I can quote my friend's daughter in a fashion piece, what's to say the lines won't be blurred in the future, say by writing a profile of my roommate's husband, who is running for Congress? Newspapers have to cover themselves so well these days because reader trust is at an all-time low."

When in doubt--you know what I'm going to say, don't you? I'll let Ms. Logue say it for me, then: "As with so many of these things, the key is disclosure. Editors hate getting blindsided. If you tell them upfront, then they can decide if the conflict compromises the story or not."