Can you keep your Web site?
Here’s a great question: Does your newsroom or employer have a written policy governing the personal Web sites (and/or blogs) of journalists?
Meranda Watling is seeking answers in a discussion over at Wired Journalists. Hop on over and give her some answers.
Recently I heard from a young reporter that her employer (well, actually she’s on an internship) wanted her to take her blog offline — even though nothing in the blog (so far) had impinged on her job. Policy, the boss said — no blogs. Later the “policy” changed to allow her to keep the blog online, but she was forbidden to write anything about her internship or the publication she’s working for.
What about a personal Web site? Your online resume? Examples of your work?
What if you maintain a Web site for, say, your church? The Girl Scout troop? Your motorcycle club?
My work doesn’t have a written policy and no one seems to care about my blog or personal site. If they did care, my employment would cease pretty quickly because I refuse to be censored by a newspaper of all things.
I’m a journalist. I work for the 4th estate. I fight to end censorship and tyranny, not to support it.
I absolutely refuse to work for a company that won’t allow me to keep a personal site and blog. I frankly don’t understand why a newspaper wouldn’t want its employees to have blogs. It at least shows that they have other skills — the kind of skills newspapers need.
This whole discussion shows exactly what is wrong with so many newspapers.
January 31, 2008 at 6:08 pmNowadays, refusing to let employees have online resumes, blogs or Web sites is tantamount to saying they can’t act in their own professional best interest.
January 31, 2008 at 6:46 pmYoung journalists especially should be bloggers and webmasters to learn the medium. Veterans who want to understand widgets and databases should be building them, for profit or not. Of course don’t blindside your bosses. They can’t back your play if they don’t understand it. If they’re curious, likely they’re blogging too.
January 31, 2008 at 10:32 pmI have my own blog, complete with resume. I started my blog to have a way to keep keep my collection of photos and multimedia.
http://jannetwalsh.blogspot.com/
See my paper’s latest multimedia on a tragedy at a local airstrip. Yes, even our reporter show with a Flip video that was combined with my video I shot with my Canon HV20HD, from the early moments after the story.
Other stories related to local tragedy
February 1, 2008 at 6:54 amhttp://www.ocala.com/apps/pbcs.dll/section?Category=news24
Jannet
Pat is absolutely right:
> It at least shows that they have other skills — the kind of skills newspapers need.
I would not have the skills I possess currently without my extracurricular Web design/development.
Newspapers are loath, or simply can’t afford, to train there employees for the Web. The least they could do is allow them to pursue training on their own time.
Of course, this doesn’t excuse the employee from undermining the business — folks need to be smart about it.
February 1, 2008 at 8:00 amKeep your nose clean and don’t talk about your bosses! (I think mom said something like that once before.) Be nonspecific about any details about the job and just use common sense. Will it hurt my objectivity or my ability to communicate with a source? And for the sake of professionalism, keep those shots of you taking tequila shots in Cabo San Lucas offline.
February 1, 2008 at 8:51 amIt’s an interesting challenge that neitherer our legal system nor our culture has fully caught up, similiar to many other changes now occuring at very rapid pace.
With the lines of private life and work life blurring more than ever, and technology making many things available outside of one’s employer infrastructure, there is no clear dividing line anymore.
Many professionals could greatly contribute to the blogsphere if they would be allowed or would feel comfortable speaking about their work related experience. But they don’t. Thus much of the blogosphere is limited to freelancers and corporate bloggers where it comes to free speech, or private bloggers carefully having to avoid anything that could be related to their work.
It’s the fear of those in control of having to confront the imperfections of their business and leadership skills. The greatest challenge is to succeed in business in the presence of perfect information. Today’s information society does make that a possible reality, but it puts great fear into many people who don’t like that scenario and thus they try to prevent it. Hopefully it’s a losing battle in the long term.
February 1, 2008 at 10:29 amFor the past year I’ve been in “don’t ask don’t tell” mode. When I asked my editor at a previous paper if it was OK to put electronic copies of my clips online, he said “I’ll pretend you didn’t ask that question.” He is a really good editor, best I’ve had, but I think the newspaper’s policies just haven’t caught up to the Information Age. I think that’s how it is a lot of places.
February 1, 2008 at 4:23 pm[…] Can you keep your web site if you start working for a newspaper? From the very excellent Teaching Online Journalism, which tips its hat to another fascinating new […]
February 2, 2008 at 11:33 pmMy newspaper lets me blog. The main concern is that I make clear my personal blogging is not endorsed by my company. I am on my own. That’s a policy with benefits for me and for my paper.
Blogging helps me understand what’s happening online far more than just passively reading or making a few comments. As a site moderator, I need to bridge quarrels that sometimes erupt in our ideologically diverse readership, deal with offensive comments, and explain how I deal with my own ideological beliefs in the context of reporting. I also need to learn about technical issues, such as differences between commenting platforms and what to do when the blog goes down.
Those skills are immediately transferable to any blogging I may do for my employer, or for comments made to my stories on our Web site. I’ve also gotten some good story advice from the readership on the blog, which I co-moderate with three others.
I advise media outlets to consider personal blogging a sort of free training class for their employees. The outlets should be willing to accept that controversies are going to arise in blogging, and not to draw back in fear of them. (or to punish their employees for an honest error in judgment). The best way to handle controversies or mistakes is to be as open and approachable with readers as possible. Blogs offer a very nimble way to do that.
All of this ties into a sense of ownership for what we do and how it’s perceived by our readers. As an aside, I sent Howard’s post about how newspapers need to carefully cultivate their comments section to my editor, and he forwarded it to everyone. Let us tend to our reader garden.
February 3, 2008 at 6:22 pmInteresting. I am a pro-education union blogger. I’m involved in my local union quite a bit, and I am a classroom teacher, too. Yet I don’t take to the blog to talk about my kids, their parents, my principals, my co-workers, the leadership (or rank and file) of my union or anything else like that.
Why? I guess I compartmentalize and exclude this stuff about my real life for several reasons. I have children, and I don’t want their teachers blogging about my kids. I have co-workers and a boss, and I don’t want them blogging about me, either.
I guess it comes down to the golden rule. I have enough stuff to blog about that I don’t need to pull in work-related stuff for me. I think it’s almost suicide if you do; at some point someone’s going to do the right google search and then you’re in trouble. Others would say that blogging under a pseudonym gives you no credibility; I say look at Publius, his efforts helped get the Constitution ratified.
February 3, 2008 at 9:22 pm@Bradley: Thanks for the comment. These points are particularly good, in my opinion:
(1) Consider personal blogging as a free training class for your reporters.
(2) Accept that controversies are going to arise in blogging. Do not retrench out of fear. (In other words, have courage.) Do not punish journalists for making an honest error in judgment. (Don’t execute someone because he got wounded in battle!)
(3) The best way to handle controversies or mistakes is to be as open and approachable with readers as possible.
February 4, 2008 at 11:50 amAs much as I love my Web site and my free speech, I’m not sure my blog and Web site are worth getting fired over.
As far as the content of a blog, or my blog in particular, I don’t see the harm in blogging about the workplace. I think an important step in moving forward, progressing, is sharing our growing pains, whether they occur at school or at work. As long as we conform to the norms of journalism–good reporting, unbiased writing, etc.–our blogs should be golden.
With personal Web sites and online portfolios, newspapers won’t be able to drag their feet forever. Eventually they’ll learn that my “online portfolio” will cease to be my “online” portfolio. It’ll just be my portfolio.
February 4, 2008 at 4:49 pmI just had to get permission from my supervisor. They did state that I shouldn’t write about my opinions of the topics I covered for work.
February 12, 2008 at 2:28 pm