Blogging in the gray zone

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Blogging in the gray zone
Can blogging get you fired? How to balance personal privacy and a wired workplace

by patrick emanuel

For those who kept them, diaries used to be a black-and-white issue. They were private, kept only for the writer’s use. They had no impact on life beyond the pages of the often-locked journal, especially no effect on the author’s work life. But as a shamed magazine editor and an untenured university professor can now attest, a digital transformation in journaling has forced writers into the gray area, a murky mess blurring the distinction between private and professional. These writers craft weblogs (blogs), a new blend of public and private issues – a blend that challenges employers whose workplaces can now be examined publicly.

Many of today’s professionals are quickly discovering the boundary between their private and professional lives is like fishing line––thin, hard to negotiate and increasingly transparent. Considered the poster girl of the “blogger generation,” Nadine Haobsh became one of the first to bring attention to this problem. Haobsh tried to have the best of both worlds. By day she was the associate beauty editor of Ladies’ Home Journal while at night she anonymously shared her exploits in the fashion publishing world on her blog Jolie in NYC. On July 22, 2005, Haobsh wrote on her increasingly popular blog about possibly resigning from her position at Ladies’ Home Journal to take a job at Seventeen magazine. In doing so, Haobsh revealed herself to her employers as the author of the blog.

When her identity was published in the New York Post, her job offer at Seventeen was rescinded––“Jolie in NYC” was officially blacklisted. Coping with these unforeseen consequences, Haobsh warned all potential bloggers, “Even if you truly are ‘just being funny’ or ‘don’t really mean it,’ think before you write. And definitely don’t write about your industry––things will absolutely be taken out of context or interpreted incorrectly, and that’s just not fun for anybody.”

Haobsh’s experience showed blogging in the workplace is cause for concern among employers, employees, bloggers and non-bloggers alike. With minimal precedence, companies, institutions and professionals enter this gray area at their own risk. The Milwaukee Journal Sentinel enforces Internet access and email policies, but does not have personal blogging guidelines for its employees. According Greg Rank of the Journal Sentinel Human Resources Department, the publication “hasn’t identified the risks of employee blogging because it is a relatively new concept.”

While many professionals are active bloggers, the potential effects on privacy and professional issues have not been fully recognized and bloggers are unaware of their hobby’s potential consequences.

“It was not really my intention that my blog be an extension of my professional activity,” says Jeremy Freese, a UW-Madison sociology professor who started blogging on a whim more than two years ago. “But since I do think about my professional activity quite a bit, sometimes I do talk about things.”

In his blog, Freese references his career but refrains from talking about confidential issues. Nonetheless, he did not mention his blog in his tenure review and worried it would hurt his tenure prospects.

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