Your clever little blog could get you fired

USATODAY reported Like a growing number of employees, Peter Whitney decided to launch a blog on the Internet to chronicle his life, his friends and his job at a division of Wells Fargo. His blog, gravityspike.blogspot.com, did find an audience: his bosses. In August 2004, the 27-year-old was fired from his job handling mail and the front desk, he says, after managers learned of his Web log, or blog.

If he was fired for merely having a blog, and there was no corporate policy against it, he got a raw deal. But if he publically bad mouthed his employer, he was a fool.

His story is more than a cautionary tale. Delta Air Lines, Google and other major companies are firing and disciplining employees for what they say about work on their blogs, which are personal sites that often contain a mix of frank commentary, freewheeling opinions and journaling. And it's hardly just an issue for employees: Some major employers such as IBM are now passing first-of-their-kind employee blogging guidelines designed to prevent problems, such as the online publishing of trade secrets, without stifling the kinds of blogs that can also create valuable buzz about a company.

That is a very good idea.

"Right now, it's too gray. There needs to be clearer guidelines," says Whitney, who has found another job. "Some people go to a bar and complain about workers, I decided to do it online. Some people say I deserve what happened, but it was really harsh. It was unfair." Wells Fargo declined to comment, but a spokeswoman said in an e-mail that the company doesn't have a blogging policy. Blogs are proliferating as fast as a computer virus. According to a report this year by public relations firm Edelman and Intelliseek, a provider of business-intelligence solutions, about 20,000 new blogs are created daily, and an estimated 10 million U.S. blogs will exist by the end of 2005. Together, these blogs link up to create what is known as a blogosphere, a collective Internet conversation that is one of the fastest-growing areas of new content on the Web. More than 8 million adults in the USA have created blogs, according to two surveys by the Pew Internet & American Life Project, a non-profit research center studying the Internet's social effects. And 32 million Americans are blog readers — a 58% jump in 2004.

Robert Co blogged Among our many agenda items, the Media Bloggers Association is sorting through various "safe blogging" issues. Stephanie Armour of USA Today has a comprehensive review of the "dangers of workplace blogging" issue. Armour interviewed me three weeks ago and I am quoted: "Companies probably need separate policies," says Robert Cox, president of the Media Bloggers Association. The context of this quote is not given so let me provide it here. What she asked was whether existing company policies were sufficient to deal with this issue. My answer was "No. Companies typically have HR policies regarding the use of company emails, the use of company computers for personal use, giving statements to the media and so on. Since the typical blogger is self-published and can produce their blog from a computer at home, companies probably need separate policies."

Damian Penny blogged USA Today notes that several people have been fired or disciplined by their employers because of what they wrote on their weblogs. I'd love to be able to come out wholeheartedly against this kind of thing, but certainly there are situations - say, revealing company secrets or actively warning people against using your employer's services - where firing would likely be justified. Each case must be decided on its merits. At the very least, if you're blogging under your real name, it's wise to post a blurb noting that your views do not represent those of your company. (On a completely unrelated note, my employer is the best darned law firm in Newfoundland, if not the country.)