Ready, Aim, FIRED: Blogging Employees In the Spotlight Again (a/k/a Firing Bloggers Part V)

Looks like blogging is getting a lot of attention, especially from companies that are firing employees who are blogging about them!

As the headline suggests, we’ve covered this issue pretty extensively already. But it won’t go away, and lately it’s been fascinating the mainstream media.

So today I’ll link to the first four parts of my coverage of this issue for those who may have missed them, pick up some of the recent stories and comments of others, note another corporate blogging policy or two, tell the stories of a couple more fired bloggers, and update the Queen of Sky story.

First, here are the prior posts from this blawg if you need to get up to speed:

“Firing bloggers to protect company image: Part I — the stories”

“Firing bloggers, Part II – challenges and opportunities of employee-bloggers”

“Firing bloggers part III — avoiding unnecessary conflicts”

“Firing bloggers part IV — more bad examples”

Michael Fitzgibbon, at Thoughts from a Management Lawyer, in “How Blogging Can Get You Fired,” cites the above posts from this blawg and adds some good observations and more links.

From Fitzgibbons’ management lawyer perspective, which I share, normally employees are fired only for good reasons and only after careful consideration. Operating from that assumption, if all the facts were known one might well conclude that all these fired bloggers were in some way quite reckless and perhaps even deserved what they got.

But I suspect in some cases termination may have been an overreaction by employers who were unfamiliar with the whole blogging phenomenon, and overestimated the impact of some negative comments in a fairly obscure blog while underestimating the bad blog press resulting from firing a blogger.

Now, the media stories:

Today CNN/Money ran this article:

“Have a blog, lose your job? Workers with Web logs are everywhere, and they’re starting to make corporate America very nervous” by Krysten Crawford

This article starts with this: “Mark Jen landed a dream job with Google Inc. in January. He was fired less than a month later.” [More on Mark below.] A couple of key points:

For companies, the growing popularity of blogs is a double-edged sword.

On the one hand, corporate managers recognize the power of word-of-mouth as a sales tool. On the other hand, they’re acutely aware of the dangers inherent in the rapid and widespread dissemination of company information. . . .

So whether a supervisor discovers an underling ridiculing his thinning hair at the company elevator bank, at a local bar after work, or on the worker’s personal blog doesn’t matter. In either instance, the boss can turn around and say, ” ‘We don’t need you. Why don’t you go work for someone else?’ ” said Margaret Edwards, a partner with Littler Mendelson, a national law firm that represents employers.

Cliff Palefsky, a San Francisco employment lawyer, says there’s a false sense that employers can’t punish their workers for voicing personal opinions — on their blogs or anywhere else. “People mistakenly believe that the First Amendment protects them in the workplace, which is generally not the case,” he said.Last week The Christian Science Monitor had this: “Office memo: ‘Blogging’ can get you bounced” by Randy Dotinga

This article leads with another fired blogger, Rachel Mosteller, who had been a features writer for a North Carolina newspaper. In her blog, the “Sarcastic Journalist” she anonymously she chronicled the people who inhabit just about any newsroom - the foul-mouthed female reporter, the chubby sportswriter, the co-worker who hoards the free books sent in by publishers seeking reviews.” She was eight months pregnant when her cover was blown and she was fired.

The Monitor article says: “San Francisco freelance journalist Curt Hopkins has documented more than 20 cases of bloggers who claim they were fired because of their online activities.”

Here’s his list, as of Tuesday, December 28, 2004: STATISTICS ON FIRED BLOGGERS

The Monitor cites a survey by the Society for Human Resource Management of 279 human resources professionals, finding that 3 percent had disciplined employee bloggers. Picking back up on the lead fired blogger, “Sarcastic Journalist,” the Monitor cites the personnel director of the paper that fired her as advising: “Ideally, bloggers would get permission from their employers before hitting the keyboard.”

Finally, the Monitor closes with this advice from a law professor:

What to do if you’ve still got the itch to blog? “My own personal advice is to live your dream,” . . . “But don’t be surprised if you’re fired.”

That’s a bit harsh; though the list of fired bloggers looks shockingly long, remember that millions are now blogging, so percentagewise it’s not that many. Additionally, at least some of them clearly were quite careless (reckless?).

CNBC has this Washington Post story: “When blogging gets risky; Bad-mouthing job leads to firings” by Amy Joyce

This story provides a little more insight on the “Sarcastic Journalist.” It says she wrote:

I really hate my place of employment. Seriously. Okay, first off. They have these stupid little awards that are supposed to boost company morale. So you go and do something ’spectacular’ (most likely, you’re doing your JOB) and then someone says ‘Why golly, that was spectacular.’ then they sign your name on some paper, they bring you chocolate and some balloons.

What employer wouldn’t be tempted to say: “OK, fine, you hate it here, so you’re outta here”?

But what employer would actually have the sense to consider the employee’s point: maybe these awards are hokey; maybe that’s what all the employees think.

Tim Anderson in IT Week writes of one such employer in: “Harness the power of blogs; The boom in blogging could bring big advantages to businesses that have the right policies in place”

The internet is buzzing with stories about people who have been sacked after complaining about their jobs.

But some incidents have had a positive outcome. Late last year, the spouse of an employee at games giant Electronic Arts posted an eye-opening complaint about working conditions to a blog hosted by LiveJournal. This was corroborated by other EA staff and drew thousands of messages of support. A few weeks later, a leaked mail from the firm’s head of human resources stated, “At the heart of the matter is a core truth: the work is getting harder, the tasks are more complex and the hours needed to accomplish them have become a burden… there are things we just need to fix.”

Now I ask you this:
If you’re an electronic game whiz, how do you feel about applying for work with “games giant Electronic Arts” if you know this story (including, let’s say, that the blogger’s identity was known and he/she was not fired, but given a seat on a committee to improve working conditions and morale)? How would you feel if you knew the blogger was fired? I thought so.

I’m not just being pro-employee-blogger here; I believe from an HR/management perspective the PR/recruiting aspect of this situation may dictate tolerating the blogger’s criticism and responding positively to it in some situations — for the good of the business, not out of sympathy with bloggers.

Anderson concludes with this:

It is also wise to consider the PR impact of sackings and litigation and of acknowledging problems and trying to fix them. The bottom line is that blogs work best for firms with nothing to hide. That means they help to drive up standards, which has to be good news.

Now on to some of the individual stories, which I find fascinating. Of course the fired bloggers’ lives go on. It should be no surprise that they go on online; “once a blogger always a blogger” seems to be the rule.

Rachel the Sarcastic Journalist posted a nice explanation of what happened to her — from her perspective — on Hatch: “Freedom of Speech: A weblog costs one reporter her job” by Rachel Mosteller

She starts out:

Let’s be honest here. Who has never made a snide comment about their boss, their job or the day-to-day things that frustrate us? Unless you’re Mother Theresa, you’ve likely made them, at least to your family and friends. I’ve made these types of comments, too; but I made them on the Internet. And they cost me my job.

Perhaps she soft-pedals a bit here, but lets assume this is accurate and what she wrote was merely the equivalent of being overheard a few times making fun of the boss or generally griping.

What would the employer’s normal disciplinary response be? Verbal warning/coaching? How much more severely should the conduct be viewed because it was communicate anonymously over the Internet? Remember, her cover was blown amongst co-workers, not necessarily amongst her larger readership (which may not have been that large).

You can catch up on Rachel on her current blog as a stay-at-home Mom and writer here (”Although she is no longer a journalist she’s still sarcastic,” she explains). To relate a little better, here’s a little auto-bio with a nice pic of her and baby.

Now meet another fired blogger, Jeremy Wright of the blog Ensight, “a business and technology blog written by a business and technology die hard” (which is beating the pants of this blawg over at the Business Blogging Awards in the Shameless Self-Promotion category)

True to form, Jeremy’s still blogging, and like Rachel has posted his story. Supposedly this post did it:

Getting to surf the web for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Getting to blog for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Sitting around doing nothing for 3 hours while being paid: Priceless.
Installing Windows 2000 Server on a P2 300: Bloody Freaking Priceless.

Suggestive of abuse of company time, though as I get it he was sitting around doing nothing because he was waiting on some computer process to complete. So at that point sitting around waiting was doing his job, not playing hookey. The attitude expressed, even if tongue in cheek, however, is pretty obviously something that would tee off any employer, on or off the Internet.

Of interest, it appears Jeremy may be making some money from blog advertising and sponsorships, and is doing some original “journalism.” The latter point suggested by this recent statement in connection with the upcoming Microsoft IE7: “I’m heading down to Microsoft tomorrow and I’ll be poking and prodding. I’m not sure anyone’ll say anything. But, like the last 8 months, it might be what isn’t said that’s more important.”

Now to the Queen of Sky update:

The infamous fired Delta flight attendant has taped a talk show appearance, and is exploring an interesting blog-for-pay opportunity with Priceline (you go girl!)

Would an internet travel agency be insightful and adventurous enough to pay Queen to fly the friendly skies to exotic locations and report on her experiences, amateur photos and all? With the publicity she’s built up thanks to being fired, she could command a fine audience and keep Priceline’s profile high with hip travelers.

Finally, there’s Mark Jen, mentioned in the first story above.

He too has written “the official story, straight from the source.”

Google has been quite hospitable to other employee-bloggers, so Mark must have really crossed a line. Perhaps this was it: “comments on financial performance and future products.” He says the firing “came as a great shock to me because two days ago we had looked at my blog and removed all inappropriate content.”

Well, he was a very new employee, and had already demonstrated poor judgment; who knows what his boss thought of his job performance. So his repentance was just too little, too late.

It appears it might be tough to know what would be acceptable blog content for Google; this company seems to understand how blogs can benefit a business by publicizing many things in a personalized voice, but it is also of necessity a secretive company when it comes to things like modifications to their search algorithms, etc.

Some interesting comments about Mark’s situation at John Battelle’s Searchblog, Scobleizer, and Jeremy Zawodny’s blog.

Now I close with some more on blogging policies.

Here’s a Sun Microsystems Policy on Public Discourse that starts as follows:

Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. We need to do a better job of telling the world. As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first (but please do read and follow the advice in this note). Blogging is a good way to do this.

This policy goes on with some excellent advice that would have kept most of the fired bloggers from getting fired. How official it is, I don’t know. It appears on the blog of Tim Bray, who says he is Technology Director at Sun Microsystems. He also says (following the policy suggestions): “I work at Sun Microsystems. The opinions expressed here are my own, and neither Sun nor any other party necessarily agrees with them.”

If you’ve made it this far with me, I thank you for your time and hope you have found this post (and the earlier ones in the series) of some value, as a blogger, fan of bloggers, employer of bloggers, counsel to employers of bloggers, or some combination of the above.

Now that it’s clear I’m a loser when it comes to “shameless self-promotion,” I’d like to close with this plug:

I spent a lot of time on this post, and would greatly appreciate it if you would forward it to anyone you think might have an interest. Thank you.

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