List of fired bloggers


I am not sure what got me started thinking about the number of people who have been fired because of blogging, but I realized that I was starting to see stories about this phenomenon, but nothing linking all of the stories together. So I thought it would be worthwhile to examine, what do we know about bloggers who get terminated and what commonalities are there?

I see two items here that can serve as easy predictions for 2005.
1) That more bloggers will lose their jobs in 2005 due to what they write
2) That some of them, including Washingtonienne and QueenofSky, should see the results of their book deals come out next year, and we may see if they get any more fame beyond their allotted fifteen minutes.

So here is the list that I have been able to compile:
1) Michael Hanscom, fired in October 2003 as a temp at Microsoft for posting a picture of Apple Macintosh G5s sitting on the loading dock at MS.
2) Troutgirl, fired from Friendster for blogs that included references to her work.
3) Matthew Brown, fired from Starbuck's for posting comments about the coffee chain, its customers and managers on his personal blog in September 2004.
4) Penny Cholmondeley, terminated from her post as Nunavut (Canada) Tourism marketing officer after someone anonymously complained about her blog to her employer, which included passing references to the locale.
5) Iain Murray, a Brit working in the US, fired from his post as Director of Research at an NPO in January 2003, apparently in part due to blogging at work.
6) Steve Olafson, fired from his job reporting for the Houston Chronicle after another reporter outed him as the anonymous force behind a blog that was critical of local politicians and other news sources.
7) Daniel P. Finney, also fired from a job as a reporter, but at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch earlier this month when they discovered he was blogging, in part about his news assignments.
8) Jessica Cutler (Washingtonienne), fired this summer after blogging for a total of two weeks about her sexual exploits with six partners, including a few highly placed government staffers.
9) Heather B. Armstrong, whose experiences as an outed blogger first to her Mormon family, and later to her employer, helped coin the term "dooced." She was fired in February 2002.
10) I have not even been able to find out this man's name, but he was "fired from "UN/CEFACT" (a volunteer organization?) for posting his thoughts on the committee (is this thing a committee or a senseless collection of letters? WTF?) on his blog...
11) Amy Norah Burch, who was fired from her job as undergraduate coordinator for the Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University, after "a handful of unflattering references to her workplace interspersed throughout the site’s archives raised eyebrows at the department." May 2004.
12) The story that has gotten so much attention this year, QueenofSky, who was fired from Delta Airlines after she posted pictures of herself in Flight Attendant uniform ("risque" poses?).

Click Read More to read the rest...

In addition to the stories listed above, there are people who have been fired from their jobs for emails they sent. Examples are Peter Chung, the investment banker who treated his international job in S. Korea as a babe-magnet and Tamara Saviano, who was pissed at Charlie Daniels' email about the Iraq war and replied (but did not make it clear enough, in her employer's eyes, that her views did not represent those of the agency she worked for). In Tamara's case, she sent the email from a personal email account, not her work account.

There are also incidents like what happened to an acquaintance of mine who was not fired outright for blogging about her co-workers, but Senior Managers and Directors were reading her posts and the next time there was a layoff, she was pretty low on the ranking and lost her job.

When you look at all of these stories, what threads begin to become apparent? Here is what I see:
1) Some did not think anyone from work would ever know about the blog.
- Matthew Brown said: "It was ignorant and rude," Mr. Brown said of his comments. "But it was for nobody except my family and friends. I didn't give the address to anyone at Starbucks. And I didn't name the manager.''
- The Washington Post reported on Jessica Cutler: "The electronic bulletin board where Jessica began posting her online diary offered her the option of creating a password so no one could read it without her consent.
" "But I thought that was, like, too much trouble for my friends to have to type in a password," Jessica says. "I thought there are so many people with their own blogs, mine is not even going to come up on the radar.""
After Jessica started to get Instant Messages telling her that Wonkette had outed her, she tried furiously to delete the blog and make it inactive. Alas, it was too late. You can still get to a recreated version of her pages here.
2) Some spent time posting to their blog while at "work."
- Iain Murray apparently falls into this category. "Mr Murray explained that he spent no more time working on the blog as other colleagues spent taking breaks from work to have a cigarette."
- Daniel P. Finney was at least suspected of doing this, as well: "They say Finney's hard drive was confiscated on Thursday, December 16, the day after the Unreal item was published."
Clyde Bentley, a professor at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, wrote concerning Finney: "Most companies developed policies, similar to their other "moonlighting" policies. Generally, if the material was collected and processed at work, it is supposed to stay at work. Many companies, however, co-opted the process by sponsoring the blogs of their employees and making the blog a part of their regular work."
- Jessica Cutler seems to be guilty of this, as well, if one were to take the recreated time stamps at face value: "Tuesday, May 18, 2004


I just took a long lunch with F and made a quick $400. When I returned to the office, I heard that my boss was asking about my whereabouts. Loser.

posted by The Washingtonienne at 2:10 PM" "
3) Some people shared information about their workplace in their blog, perhaps inappropriately.
- Troutgirl discussed the code she had worked on.
- Matthew Brown's blog actions were described by Jason Koulouras as: "When a manager refused to let him go home sick, Mr. Brown sounded off about his boss from home."
- Heather Armstrong and Amy Norah Burch both had posts on their blogs referring to their co-workers or supervisors. Heather wrote in one entry: "Ignore the inane string of email from the Vice President of Spin to the Vice President of Enabling His Fist Up Your Ass, cc’d to everyone in the company because, really, what’s a cock fight without an audience? Instant message the only other cool person in the office the only other person who’s not wearing a belt that matches his shoes to tell him that Her Wretchedness is once again ordering Prada shoes online and talking about it out loud."
- Delta's issue with Queenofsky seems to be based on the fact she posted pictures of herself in FA uniform (although they are apparently unresponsive in her requests to be provided with documentation of Delta policies of which she was in violation, and male pilots have also posted pix of themselves on their personal sites).
- Michael Hanscom not only revealed Power Mac G5s being purchased by Microsoft ( no big surprise there since he worked in the graphics department), but the pictures were of his workplace and he revealed the building that was S/R.
- Let's not forget Jessica Cutler, who not only wrote about her peccadilloes, but identified which ones she was working with.
4) The revenge factor.
- Someone outed Jessica to Wonkette. Who?
- Steve Olafson was outed by a rival reporter.
- Did one of Matthew Brown's friends or family send his blog URL to his supervisor?

What else am I missing? Please let me know if you are aware of other reported blogging-related terminations or if you see some commonalities I did not pull out.

Posted: Wed - December 29, 2004 at 11:29 AM        

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