When newsrooms attack bloggers
I just saw a link to this from Slashdot. Apparently a CNN producer, Chez Paziena, got fired from his job for having a blog. More specifically the opinions he expressed on his blog, even though he never wrote about his job.
He started a blog, Deus Ex Malcontent, to keep himself busy after surgery to remove a brain tumor. Chez had not seen an HR book until a month before he was approached to be fired:
I said that they can’t possibly expect CNN employees, en masse, to not engage in something as popular and timely as blogging if they don’t make themselves perfectly clear.
My HR rep’s response: “Well, as far as we know, you’re the only CNN employee who’s blogging under his own name.”
It took self-control I didn’t know I had to keep from laughing, considering that I could’ve named five people off the top of my head who blog without hiding their identities.
I really wonder how many smaller news orgs actually have rules on outside blogging. I’m pretty sure my bosses know I blog but they haven’t said anything. It’s not like I hide it. Other than that, I blog almost daily for a World of Warcraft guild site that I run. (but that’s not connected to my real name and if anything people would think know I’m weird instead of dangerous if they saw it).