Comments on: Should You Really Write that in a Corporate Blog? Legal Guidelines for Company-Sanctioned Blogs

By: Nancy Germond

Nancy Germond — Sat, 24 Feb 2007 16:32:20 +0000

If we are expecting most employees to have the level of maturity to determine what is appropriate for a workplace blog, we may be overestimating our workforce. In today’s “anything goes” society (think of the cell phone conversations you hear that you don’t want to), there has to be some level of editorial control to avoid liability, protect workplace trade secrets and to limit damage to morale.

By: Alex Ross

Alex Ross — Thu, 15 Feb 2007 21:47:43 +0000

I completely believe that blogs can expose a company’s flaws and weaknesses. There is nothing to stop employees that have been fired or laid off from starting a blog and exposing the company. With the anonymity of blogs, it could be difficult to determine who is even writing the blog. Hopefully, potential customers will not rely on all blogs as credible sources of facts.

By: George Lenard

George Lenard — Tue, 13 Feb 2007 04:37:55 +0000

One thing employers can do to mitigate risk while allowing employees to blog officially is to create an editorial structure.

This can be facilitated by using the built-in levels of authorization available in a tool like Wordpress to create one or more layers of approval prior to publication.

(Certain employees could simply be authorized to submit drafts, but not publish; others could write or edit but not publish.)

Even an employee’s own blog that mentions work could be sanctioned, subject to such protection, which would be invisible to the audience, like the oversight of a print editor.

I know this suggestion will rankle many bloggers who feel that the essence of a blog, even a corporate-sponsored one, is that there is a free, authentic “voice,” which would be suppressed by such editing.

Certainly there could be a tension between such editors (some would say “censors”) and the bloggers. But newspaper editorial staffs have long lived with such tension. Strong columnists with good judgment probably get published with little editing, but I suspect the authority of the powers that be to say “no” is always there, and the process always includes editorial review.