BlogTalk: Let On-line Bygones be Bygones
April 18, 2008
BlogTalk will be a re-occurring feature where I analyze some of the best and worst moments from the sports blogging landscape. Just a quick note about some events of this week. First, a blogger for Kissing Suzy Kolber was fired from his Washington Post job after he revealed his real-life identity in a blog post. The reason for his firing was that MediaBistro decided to take the picture he posted with that post and make a mini-story about how this Washington Post reporter was drunk. The Washington Post, apparently embarrassed by that story, fired him. Second, a female sports blogger who I won’t name complained that someone left a message on her work phone, and that said person was definitely a blogger.
I am quite disturbed by both of these incidents, because they represent on-line bloggers turning on other on-line bloggers and exacting real-life punishment. Oh, I’m sure the Media Bistro individual did not know the KSK blogger; but really, was putting up one small post of content, that attracted zero comments, worth getting someone fired over? And I can’t believe that anything this female sports blogger said on-line was worth off-line retaliation. Sure, I correct and argue with sports bloggers all the time, ON-LINE. However, I do my best to believe them to be excellent people in their real lives, who merely have the misguided misfortune not to agree with me on the topic we are arguing about, ha. In fact, one reason I was pleased to join this site is that although all of us can get emotional and passionate on topics we care about, we all know that there’s a time and a place for said debates.
I don’t really have any take-aways here, and I don’t want to be caught wagging my digital finger of truth at the entire Internet. But I’m just disappointed at all of this. When did our on-line lives become so important that we had to extract off-line revenge or shame just for the sake of a few more hits or a little more blogger street cred?
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6 Responses to “BlogTalk: Let On-line Bygones be Bygones”
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I disagree with this post. One of the thngs I don’t like about the Internet is when it’s used as digital courage to enable people to say things they wouldn’t say in real life. I don’t know where this notion that “what happens on the Internet stays on the Internet” comes from. The Internet is not Vegas. It’s just a medium of communication. And if you communicate something that provokes someone, then be brave enough to accept the responsibility to deal with it. I’m not advocating a criminal response to communication you don’t agree with, but I don’t see anything wrong with a phone call.
Reservoir God,
In the case of the KSK, I don’t see how your analysis holds up. He was in a picture possibly drunk with a mascot, on his own time and got fired for it. He wasn’t hiding behind the internet, as a matter of fact he was “outing” himself as a WP writer from his online persona. I can’t for the life of me figure out why they fired the guy but then maybe i’m too liberal in my views on how to comport yourself if you are a journalist. Given that, I really can’t see why they fired him as opposed to using the situation to there adavantage because apparently he was pretty popular at KSK. Go figure.
I think the KSK dude was trying to get fired. Why else would he do what he did?
Why else would he link to the Post THREE times in the same post while announcing who he worked for? He wanted some attention for some reason and got it.
MC, the second incident is a completely separate thing from Tunison/Ape getting canned by the WaPo. That’s obviously disturbing.
Tunison knew the Post probably wouldn’t look well on it (he even tagged the coming out post with “wapo will fire me in 3…2…”) and it probably has very little to do with the picture of himself drunk. My guess, uneducated as it is, has to do with the attitude at mainstream media organizations that any and all writing done by a staffer is a reflection on the company — and the content on KSK might have been viewed by his bosses as a violation of the employment policy and giving the paper a bad image.
From Editor and Publisher, quoting the Post’s stylebook as a possible reason:
“We work for no one except The Washington Post without permission from supervisors. Many outside activities and jobs are incompatible with the proper performance of work on an independent newspaper.
Our private behavior as well as our professional behavior must not bring discredit to our profession or to The Post.”
I don’t think Tunison should have been canned, but those are the rules most media orgs operate under.
S2N, you’re right that lumping the two acts together was kind of awkward. But what angers me the most about the Tunison situation is not that he was fired, but that it was another blog that got him fired. It’s one thing if the Washington Post fired him after he brought it to their attention that he was a blogger elsewhere. But after reading his original post announcing his identity, I happen to believe it was the Media Bistro post that truly got him fired.
Yeah, but that’s what Media Bistro (and sites of its ilk) do. Even the most minor stuff that affects its beat gossip-wise, it will cover.