The Dangers of Blogging

Monday Morning my lovely wife sent me an email with this article attached.

It was on MSN and detailed how having a blog can both help and hurt a person's professional career.

In recent months the news has been full of accounts detailing how individuals lost their jobs because of information or opinions they posted on the Internet. "Facebook Firing" is sure to show up next year under new terms in the dictionary.

This has been on my mind much in recent days because last week a Blogger from the midwest made it clear to his readership that he was taking it private. We could still read it but we had to send him an email and get on his "Permission" list. He did this because he has been out of work for six months, and had suspicions that prospective employers had read his blog and possibly had a less than favorable opinion of him.

I personally know of a person whose employer investigated him for blogging at work. He did not, but he had to defend himself. He was fortunate that the IT department could readily prove no one accessed blogger from his work equipment, but he had to explain that he scheduled his essays to post on time lag, and that was how they appeared during working hours.

This prompted his employer to institute an Internet use protocol for all employees to read and sign. I actually think that is a good thing, but personally it also scares me to know that your employer can influence what you write about and in a subtle way also influence your right to express yourself.