The Blogging Journalist

Blogging Can Make Workplace Drama A Public Affair

The Toronto Globe and Mail's Roma Luciw reported January 31, 2007: "Companies around the world are quickly discovering that the popularity, reach and speed of the Internet has turned what used to be a private affair -- complaining about work with a few colleagues over a beer -- into a very public affair. Like their global counterparts, Canadian companies are scrambling to come up with policies to address the digital ramblings."

To read more, please see "When blogging casts an unflattering light.

Rod Boothby's 'Blogging Vs. Your Career'

Innovation Creators' Rod Boothby has a recommended post headlined "Blogging Vs. Your Career." He starts off with a quote by  IBM's Luis Suarez, which says "People are [terrified] to write down something through weblogs that they may be accountable for at some point, (because otherwise why wouldn’t they blog?)"

"Or put another way," Boothby wrote in his August 21, 2006 post, "I think that any business person who has long term career objectives in mind should be concerned about what they write in blogs.

"The stakes get higher when people connect you with your employer." Boothby explains why in the post.

'Don't Bad-Mouth Your Company In Public'

"Blogging technology may be new, but the rule of thumb for talking about about your employer is as old as business itself: Don't bad-mouth your company in public," says Leo Morris at "Opening Arguments," a News-Sentinel  blog. The publication is located in Fort Wayne, Indiana.

See "Blogging the hand that feeds you."

'Words Of Caution' For Employers And Blogging Employees

On August 6, 2006, The Indianapolis Star published "things that employers and their workers who blog should consider. It's good advice. See "Words of caution."

Even CIA Bloggers Get Fired

Before reports surfaced July 21, 2006 that CIA software contract employee Christine Axsmith was axed for blogging about and reportedly criticizing a CIA interrogation technique called “waterboarding, I had never heard of "Classified Blogging" in an intelligence context.

However, I had heard of and read articles from Studies in Intelligence, the CIA's once classified in-house journal.

As The New York Times notes in a July 22, 2006 article headlined "C.I.A. Worker Says Message on Torture Got Her Fired," Axsmith 

kept the “Covert Communications” blog on a top-secret computer network used by American intelligence agencies.

The Washington Post, which broke the story July 21, 2006, says

Only people with top-secret security clearances could read her musings, which were posted on Intelink, the intelligence community's classified intranet.

The Post's Dana Priest wrote that, "Hundreds of blog posts appear on Intelink. The CIA says blogs and other electronic tools are used by people working on the same issue to exchange information and ideas," she noted.

Axsmith, according to The Post saw signs of trouble "on July 13, after she posted her views on torture and the Geneva Conventions." The paper said 

her blog was taken down and her security badge was revoked. On Monday [July 16, 2006]  Axsmith was terminated by her employer, BAE Systems, which was helping the CIA test software.

Lesson: If you are going to blog about your employer or the contract agency you're assigned to, don't do it on their computers. Catherine S, a British blogger working for a British accounting firm in Paris, made that mistake. She wrote about in a July 19, 2006 post at comment is free, the Guardian comment blog.

"It has been barely 24 hours since the first article appeared in yesterday's Daily Telegraph about my dismissal, but although much has been said, I feel the need to tell this story in my own words - not least to shrug off the Bridget Jones comparisons (have diary, am female, therefore must be a Bridget-alike) which make me somewhat uncomfortable." See "I was fired for blogging."

By the way, you can get fired for blogging using your personal computer if you write something unfavorable about your employer or discuss business secrets. There is no such thing as free speech in the work place.

Who da' Punk: 'Microsoft's Mystery Insider

Seattle Times columnist Danny Westneat has an article in the may 28, 2006 edition on Who da'Punk, the anonymous Microsoft employee who publishes Mini-Microsoft, a blog that has galvanized many rank-and-file Microsofties who otherwise are just cogs in the big corporation still looking at world through the eyes of old pioneers when what's needed is new blood to compete with the young swashbucklers at Google.

 

"Mini is one of hundreds of bloggers at Microsoft," Westneat writes. "Yet he's earned a Zorro-like status. Speculation is rampant about who he is and if he'll be outed and fired. His site, with thousands of comments from Microsoft workers, has been dubbed a "virtual union hall."

 

"This month," Westneat added, "after the company debuted a new pay and benefits policy, some said it was due to the bosses finally clueing in to worker angst via Mini's site.

"Can one person change a huge company? Mini did. And we don't even know his name," wrote Robert Scoble, who runs another Microsoft Web log (Scobleizer)."

Mini, as Who da'Punk is more commonly called, has considered coming forth rather than waiting to be outed. According to Westneat, he feels guilty for not telling his wife he's behind Mini-Microsoft.  At least one Microsoft employee has discovered who he is but has vowed to keep the secret.

For more, see "Microsoft's mystery insider." By the way, I'm a big fan of Mini's. I've been mentioned in his blog and in Scoble's in connection with a post I did on Mini. I've done several. 

Bloggers Opine on Bill Hobbs Resignation

John Spragens at Nashville Scene noted April 20, 2006 that Blogger "Bill Hobbs gets canned and—surprise!—bloggers everywhere are opining." To learn why, please see "Blogged to Death."

Links added to provide background on the controversy surrounding Hobbs.

Can Gripe Blogs be Grounds for Dismissal?

WKYC.com, the website of WKYC TV in Cleveland, Ohio, asserted in an April 18, 2006 article that,

Anybody and everybody has a blog on the Internet these days. For some people, blogs have become "gripe sites" where people complain about coworkers, bosses and even company policies. The question facing human resource managers: can these blogs be grounds for dismissal?

"Denver labor law attorney Kimberlie K. Ryan says it depends," WKYC told its readers. Ryan was quoted as saying: "These blogs often embody the tension between a worker's free speech and privacy rights on one hand, and an employer's rights to protect confidential information and good will, on the other."

For more, please see "Can you be fired ... for blogging?"