So there I was, sitting at the library catching up on my celebrity gossip (People, Jude Law cover story, apparently he's an incredible cad who cheated on Sadie during their marriage with various women, but we knew that didn't we?), when my eye was caught by an article that made my blood run cold.
What was this article that sent shivers down my spine? Well, it was an article about employees who had been fired from their jobs for blogging. Yes, for keeping an online journal just like this one. Of course, I should mention that the three employees that were interviewed weren't exactly blameless individuals. All three had blogged about their jobs. One woman had actually posted pictures of herself in her Delta airlines uniform. The lone guy was fired from Google after two weeks. Apparently he thought the company would be cool with his blogging about the inner workings of Google, since they own blogger, but he was wrong.
Jolie in NYC lost a new job at Seventeen magazine, after she was fired by Ladies Home Journal. She was actually about to give her notice at LHJ, when she revealed that she had been approached by a local newspaper who wanted to write about her blog. Don't cry for her, however, she's now represented by the William Morris agency, although she has the nerve to have a button for donations on her site.
I'm facing personal bankruptcy, and I still don't have a donation button, because frankly I would feel wrong soliciting donations on my blog, but hey I may just have to change my feelings on that one.
The moral of this article was basically, if you're blogging, don't write about your job. The article intimated that companies may start having a 'no blogging' policy in their personnel contracts. When I worked at MTV, I never once mentioned the company in my blog, despite the fact that there was alot of really juicy stuff that I could have blogged about. After I was let go by Barclays, I personally deleted every reference to the company from my blog.
2) Don't blog at work, wait until you get home (just to be on the safe side) and 3) don't tell anyone at work that you do blog.
Big brother is definitely watching you.
Wow, interesting. Yeah, you have to be careful these days.
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