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Fri. Jan 14, 2005

Don't Blog Up Your Gig

I’m moving most of this off the front page, because it’s boring blogging about blogging, and most folks couldn’t care less. But if you blog, or leave comments in blogs, and have a job that you’d like to keep, you might want to read on.

Because the Blogging Revolution has eaten another job, and even the Atlantic Ocean was no barrier.

A bookseller has become the first blogger in Britain to be sacked from his job because he kept an online diary in which he occasionally mentioned bad days at work and satirised his “sandal-wearing” boss.

Joe Gordon, 37, worked for Waterstone’s in Edinburgh for 11 years but says he was dismissed without warning for “gross misconduct” and “bringing the company into disrepute” through the comments he posted on his weblog.

Mr Gordon, a senior bookseller who rarely mentioned work in his blog and did not directly identify his branch of Waterstone’s, said he had offered to stop posting anything about his working life online when the company called a disciplinary meeting. According to his union, Waterstone’s rejected his plea despite it not having any guidelines on whether its employees are allowed to keep weblogs.

“This wasn’t a sustained attack,” Mr Gordon told the Guardian. “I was not deliberately trying to harm the company. I was venting my spleen.

“This was moaning about not getting your birthday off or not getting on with your boss. I wasn’t libelling anyone or giving away trade secrets.”

Guardian: “Blogger sacked for sounding off”

Though this is “news,” it’s not new. The Bloggers’ Rights Blog says “This page contains a list of companies that are purported to have ‘fired, threatened, disciplined, fined or not hired people because of their blog’” ... followed by 38 companies, representing a pretty broad range of corporations and organizations, large and small.

It seems like whenever these stories come up, I’m struck by one side or the other of the “communication gap” that exists surrounding employers and blogs. As in the story above, it almost always turns out that the company had no existing policy on employee blogs, and we’ve reached an age where that’s a real problem. Bloggers now number in the millions, and the growth curve is ever upward. There needs to be boundaries known to all (at least, within each company), so when there’s an issue, there’s a framework to discuss it beyond “clean out your desk.”

And on the employee side, it’s a bit tougher if you’re already in a job (you have to judge if you can safely bring it up), but if you’re negotiating for a new job, you owe it to yourself and the company to bring it up. Simply ask, “does your company have a policy on employees having blogs, because I’ve got one, and though I don’t foresee any conflict at all, I don’t want it to be a secret.” Luckily, we have also reached an age where employers in some industries are known to actually hire people because of the exposure their blog has garnered them.

The one industry that does seem to stand out on that list of companies is media, specifically newspapers. After a fellow reporter got fired (perhaps deservedly), M.K. Binker wrote about “the subject of journalist bloggers who work for companies, particularly ‘old media’ types like my employer,” and offered up some “New Rules.” I’m going to excerpt the hell out of his advice and mix in my own thoughts, because I think it applies beyond “journalist bloggers.”

Show some respect. Respect those you are writing about. Respect your colleagues, your employer and your readers.

If what you do on your private blog diminishes your credibility or hurts your ability to do the job, then stop. Now.

Blog on your own time and your own dime. I will comment occasionally from work, but I write blog entries at home, when I’m off the clock.

You’ll notice that I don’t refer to work much here at all, except in very generic ways. I don’t vent my frustrations, and I don’t mention specific clients in any way. Being a freelancer, I’ve had lots of bosses over the 4.5 years I’ve been doing this, so you know I’ve got some stories to tell. But no one would benefit from it, other than the two seconds of fleeting satisfaction I might get from venting steam. And it would definitely “diminish [my] credibility or hurt [my] ability to do the job.”

As for “Blog on your own time and your own dime,” I’ll call that and raise you one more firing (I think). The very nature of blogging, a reverse chronological time stamped list of periods when you weren’t working … works against you. If you’re at work, and the voice in your head simply won’t stop until you bang out the thought, send yourself an e-mail and post it when you get home. If you don’t, and your Source of Income discovers many of your posts were made while you were allegedly working for them, don’t whine like a little girl, take it like a man. Even if you’re a girl.

But it goes further. When he says “I will comment occasionally from work,” I think that’s a mistake, too. That can be even bigger trouble. Because now you’ve moved beyond the random chance that your boss will discover your blog … you’re placing your fate in someone else’s hands.

We’ll pretend I made this next story up, since I don’t know for sure how it finally resolved, and do not want to stir up more dust on either end (I was asked to help after it was way too late). So excuse my vagueness, but the point will still be painfully clear.

There was once a well intentioned person, who read an article on a rather wild-eyed blog about a subject this person was quite familiar with, indeed, an area in which they worked. This well-intentioned person left a literate response on the issue, if a tiny bit strident due to the baiting approach of the article at this wild-eyed blog. You know how it is.

In my opinion, this person made two mistakes. The first was posting the comment from work. Not because of the time stamp, but because when you leave a comment, your IP number is recorded as well. And I can trace your IP number to see (generally) where you were. Like behind a company firewall. This person’s second mistake merely compounded the first; when they posted the comment, they used their full name and left their company e-mail address. A red flag to instigate the IP search, if you’re that type.

You can imagine how this ended, er, um, the end of this story I made up. Last I … imagined … this person was at the very least in deep doo-doo with their boss, and might well be on their way to firing. Not because they blog, but because they left a comment in one. One where the wild-eyed blog proprietor was more than willing to use it against them.

When you leave a comment on my site from your place of employment, you give me great power. If I was that kind of guy. In the circumstances above, I could contact your company with the text of your comment, time stamp, and IP address (maybe even the whole string of your server requests pulled from my access log, showing exactly how much time you wasted at my site). And simply ask your boss, “does your company stand behind this statement made on my site from behind your firewall?”

If I was that kind of guy. Like the one encountered in the story above. And if I was a really nasty piece of work (in the blogosphere? No!), I could alter what you said, and then contact your company, blustering about all kinds of litigious mayhem soon to befall the company due to your actions. Sure, you could claim I’d altered your actual comment, and you might even be able to find cause for them to eventually believe you. But by the time it was all sorted out, well, let’s just say it would “diminish your credibility or hurt your ability to do the job.”

Damn, I’m evil. But you gave me the keys when you posted your comment from work. And you know what? Even if you left a questionable comment, and I wasn’t evil in response … Google is an elephant who will never forget your words.

Back to a much nicer guy, Mr. Binker:

Leave your competition alone [...] That takes a lot of self control, especially when I read something that is purely bullshit or self-aggrandizing or just plane wrongheaded.

Why not engage? First off: I get paid to put facts in the paper, not straighten out the blog world.

Second, just because someone else acts in a disreputable fashion does not empower me to do the same.

Oh, what I would give for the power to be able to place a sticky note on the monitor of every blogger alive, with that last line written in Big Red Bold Sharpie … “just because someone else acts in a disreputable fashion does not empower me to do the same.” There may be a book in this: Everything I Need to Know About Blogging I Learned in Kindergarten.

As Mom put it, “If Jimmy blogged about jumping off the Empire State Building, would you jump off the Empire State Building just so you could blog about it, too?” No, Mom would hope for a Kinder and Gentler Blogosphere, where her children didn’t say such nasty things about other people. In her honor, I’ve already spiked two pieces this year. Because they were just castigations of bloggers who I felt had acted “in a disreputable fashion.” And they would have just compounded the stench, rather than neutralize it.

Of course, many post to the web anonymously, either in their blog or in comments, thinking they can thus avoid recriminations, fair or foul. Mr. Binker thinks you’re merely deluding yourself:

Being anonymous solves nothing.

If you’re violating ethical principals but you’re anonymous, you’re still violating ethical principals. If you shouldn’t write it if the entire world knew who you are, then you shouldn’t write it behind the curtain.

Should the ethics of that elude you, remember this: you work in a profession of gossips who like working on mysteries. We will find you; we will out you; and the shit will hit the fan eventually.

While I certainly agree that ethical violations, as well as social violations, are not mitigated by posting anonymously, I’ve seen several circumstances where posting anonymously made perfect sense to me.

Like the woman with an … unstable … “ex” who’d love to find her name online somewhere. Or the person who has a taxpayer funded job, yet still has opinions about their field they can share without any legal or ethical violation (think of a first grade teacher who wants to blog about higher education issues). Or the long time blogger who has had a site (or two) generate trauma in their work/personal life, and now prefers to keep it quiet and anonymous. To name but a few of the legitimate reasons I’ve encountered.

It’s a choice, and one I don’t begrudge people who don’t choose it due to ill intent.

But Mr. Binker is right, it is a bit of an illusion. And for most, it’s enough. But if someone wants to bad enough, they can probably “out” you. Especially if you’re sloppy about your post/comment times and locations. And if you draw enough blood, or piss enough people off, they’ll surely try. So anonymity is no protection for your behavior, though many try to use it as such (especially in comments sections).

As Mr. Binker says in closing, “No list of rules, including this one, will keep you out of trouble.” Unless you also use your brain.

As blogging continues to mainstream, we’ll hear about more of these clashes between the Old World and the New, as people get fired and/or sued for the things they blog. Most of us will thankfully hear about them online, second hand, rather than up close and personal. But it pays to pause and think before clicking Send/Save.

That’s all I’m sayin’. Have fun, and express thyself abundantly, but be careful and thoughtful, because it’s really easy to blog up your gig, man.