As always, a useful perspective from Rebecca, this time on Eason Jordan:
It is a collision of expectations that is at the root of the whole incident. The Davos conference, as I understand it, is explicitly understood to be off the record--a place where movers and shakers (and select journalists) can get together and speak openly to each other without worrying about representing their professions, their employers, or their constituencies. The conference is designed to elicit the uncensored remark: for open conversation and debate without fear of public repercussion.
In this sense, Eason Jordan got fired for blogging. Except, of course, he's not a blogger. And nobody's ever been fired for blogging. But his words getting taken out of context and resulting in his resignation from his position put him in an untenable, unemployable position, at least to those who choose a false clarity over the nuance and understanding any of us would extend to the people we care about.
The key concept is meeting expectations, and whether those expectations are reasonable, forgiving, and fair. I don't know Mark Jen, but I can tell you the core of the reason he got fired from Google was for not meeting their expectations of good judgement. That's the same reason I said before that nobody's ever been fired for blogging.
The remarkable thing is that we in the blogosphere are so bullheaded in making our judgements on these issues. Google owns Blogger, reached out to the entire blogging industry in initiating the nofollow initiative, and in general is pretty clueful about the potential of the medium. And I say that as a nominal competitor of theirs. But tech bloggers prefer to believe that "Google doesn't get it!" than to think that maybe they're just trying to enforce a reasonably consistent policy that would work for all the hundreds of people who work at their company.
So, I assert that nobody's ever been fired for blogging. How can you test this hypothesis? Take a person's words, and guess what would happen if you took the exact same words or ideas and sent them to the public via letter to the editor, streetcorner soapbox, or pony express. Would they still get you canned? Then you weren't fired for blogging. I haven't seen a convincing example of a situation where this wasn't true yet. And believe me, in my line of work, I hear about every person that gets "fired for blogging".
And about Eason Jordan: More myopic blogger triumphalism. Dear political bloggers, most people, even in the blogosphere, have never heard of the whole kerfuffle, let alone the one surrounding Jeff Gannon. This is inside-baseball cliquishness at its worst. I'm not saying these guys didn't screw up, I'm saying that you didn't win. It won't temper we liberals who control the media to be more moderate, and it won't keep the White House from trying to spin the media. Net effect? Lots of negatives, few positives.
Not to put too fine a point on it, but you're hurting us. You're hurting all weblogs.
We're just barely into the phase where normal people have heard the word "blog", and the zealous political bloggers who form a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think of blogging as "that thing that gets journalists fired". That sucks, and it's going to limit the number of people who join into our medium. And the zealous tech bloggers who form a loud, obnoxious minority of bloggers have decided they want their grandmothers to think that blogging is "that thing that gets regular people fired". That's not better.
You can't make a medium where there's absolutely zero tolerance for being human and making mistakes. Every political blogger crowing about Eason and Gannon is just sealing the fate of us all when large journalistic organizations start to reciprocate. I know I couldn't stand up to the scrutiny of even the smallest news network or newspaper focusing all its resources on finding my weaknesses, flaws, inconsistencies, or misstatements. Hell, I'd have to eliminate about 90% of the jokes I make from my daily conversations.
But this is the direction that we're headed. A blogger can't be held responsible by his employer for his words that he incontrovertibly published on his own site, but a journalist can be held responsible for his alleged words taken out of context. Maybe this will all resolve itself when more bloggers are considered journalists and they're forced to start digging up dirt on themselves. I doubt it.
So what should we do? I'd described a (fairly tech-centric) way to try to effect change, but in general the way to persuade people to do the right thing is by understanding where they're coming from, trying to put their decisions and actions in the context of their circumstances, and then finding a motivation within their goals and needs that would encourage them to do what you think is right.
It's not following these steps that has resulted in blogs having such little influence so far. Despite all the hype and triumphalism, any media movement that involves over 10 million people should be having more of an impact than it has already. But blogs have been so polarized and antagonistic (you're just like the media you hate) that they're doing a piss-poor job of persuading.
I think we can do better.
Good stuff, and certainly not limited to the political sphere. Last week, Boing Boing took Lifehacker to task (under the title “Boing Boing readers fisk Lifehacker.com on MPAA shutdowns”) because of an assumed connection between Sony’s sponsorship of the site and Gina’s comments on the matter. (Pot, meet kettle…have you noticed all the ads on BB lately? Is there a conflict of interest there?)
Maybe those BB readers were right in a strict sense, but since when does BB value its superiority over trying to get to the truth of the situation? Maybe asking Gina or Nick Denton if Sony’s sponsorship of the site had anything to do with the post or attempting to correct any factual inaccuracies in Gina’s post might have been more worthwhile. The debate on copyright is going to go nowhere if anytime anyone’s asked about the topic, they start foaming at the mouth about it.
“But his words getting taken out of context…”
Hmm, when I read this from you, I start to wonder what you’ve read of the issue. The “out of context” line came from the CNN PR staffer who tried to snuff the conversation by back-channel email.
The key problem with Jordan is that he did not provide the context when requested. We do know that many in attendence were shocked at his words, and their subsequent paraphrasings map up in most salient respects. Getting the transcript was the actual goal.
The NYT/WaPo says “lynch mob, out-of-context”, and there have been some bloggers who roar “off with his head”, but the majority of the conversation has been “What did he actually say? why is it so difficult to get an answer?” To that, we can now likely add “And what’s up with all his friends calling us names?”
“I’m saying that you didn’t win.” When I read the conversation, the takeaway I got was the neutral “What’s the actual story?” It would have been helpful if the high-end reporters in the audience had the same set of priorities, but their organizations, apparently, saw it in those win/lose terms you describe.
jd
I can be a pretty negative guy. however, compared to what I gauge as the overall tone of this medium… I feel tame. As a result, I’m finding myself unusually cautious about stepping into the ring with a blog of my own.
This "trend" is inevitable IMO, unless, as you’ve done, people step up and let it be known that it should not be tolerated.
One of my sites contains a forum of 50,000+ people. As I’ve witnessed this site grow I’ve found more and more negative personalities popping out. Negativity is a EASY way to be heard, it is an EASY way to get attention, and it is an EASY way to bond with others.
I liken it to the way people typically behave at work. Think about the most common thing your average co-worker uses as a "bonding" topic at work? Hands down, it would be negativity about the company, the boss, or the project. That’s what I’ve observed EVERY place I have ever worked.
Being negative is the easiest way to get attention in this medium and others. Anyone can be negative. It is HARD to be constructive. If we continue to build-up foundations built on negativity, there will be no stopping it and it will destroy this medium.
With the release of Wordpress 1.5 this week, I’ve decided it’s the perfect opportunity to stop making excuses… and try my hand at this blogging thing. I’ve outlined a few topics to get started, and in analyzing which of the bunch is most likely to get circulated the fastest, it is undoubtably and unfortunately the topic with the most negative theme. I guess that one will go on the chopping block. However, it’s unfortunate because I’d like to be heard… and it’s hard to get that feather in your cap by being positive around these parts. I guess I’ll just have to actually put some work into it because I’d be doing myself and all of you wrong if I took the easy way out by being negative.
Maybe I shouldn’t have said all that… because after taking in Jason’s post… I’d love to get medieval on Boing Boing >:)
“The key problem with Jordan is that he did not provide the context when requested.”
I think I should be more specific here, because your points are well-made, John. I didn’t mean that we didn’t understand the conversation Jordan was participating in, but rather we weren’t in the room .We can know what words surrounded a statement, but not the environment, and that’s the context I feel we’re lacking.
“… rather we weren’t in the room….”
Gotcha, thanks for the confirm, I’m with you on that. (I think I got a little sensitive to the “blogger lynchmob” stories in the commercial press the last two days.)
jd
I still fail to see why this is a ‘new’ problem. This kind of thing has been (and will continue to be) going on for decades. Granted the audience is much much larger than it was before but there will ALWAYS be those who take a narrow (negative) view of things.
Ohh and I should state that this has made nary a ripple over the ‘pond’. So my opinion is somewhat diluted as, to be frank, I’d rather waste my energy doing something constructive.
The very fact there are “10 million” bloggers is why any effort to present bloggers as a medium with any shared standards whatsover is a futile gesture.
I welcome the day when the media fisks bloggers with the same intensity.
After all unless there are real life repurcussions for speech, freedom is meaningless.
That’s not to say your ideas are not commendable and a civilised portion of bloggers will not adopt them.
There was a story on Techdirt that I read over the weekend. I pointed at that as well as a story at ZDnet as well. I don’t think that anyone has been fired JUST for blogging; there’s typically other motivations there.
My goodness. New media format fails to alter human nature. Film at 11. :-)
Couldn’t some people technically be fired for blogging because what they’re saying on a blog is no longer anonymous? Employers might not fire somebody for writing that sort of thing in a letter, because a letter is usually directed towards one person only. With a blog, though, the entire world can read it, and if the company thinks that the writing on the blog is dangerous to them, wouldn’t that mean that the person is fired for blogging?
Sad, sad, sad. This will focus everything in the about blogging on the negative, which will obscure its real joys. A few bad apples, indeed.
You may want to say hello to the army of people about to visit from FreeRepublic.
Needless to say, you’re about to get your theory blown away.
I’m not worried about the Freepers, experience shows that there’s about zero chance they’ll actually click through and read the rather lengthy post that’s been linked. They’ll just work themselves up into a froth over on the site without realizing that my words were taken out of context.
The NY Daily News has gotten in on the act too:
http://nydailynews.com/front/story/294168p-251756c.html
Annalee Newitz from the EFF is quoted: “You wouldn’t say nasty things about your boss to his face, and it’s probably not appropriate to do it on your blog either.”
It’s a little incongrous that they offer six blogs by city teachers and five gossip/politics blogs as examples of “web journal-ists.”
My story is one that isn’t out there yet, but I’m another blogger that has been fired for what I wrote on my weblog, add one more to the count!
realestate.com.au fires employee last week for blogging
http://blog.myspace.com/index.cfm?fuseaction=blog.view&friendID=16243252&blogID=137005716&MyToken=e044f226-1233-4ac0-a4b2-3314544982c9