Journos and Blogging

JVL points us to a (completely unscientific, as far as I can tell) survey of how newspapers would react to their people having a personal blog. Apparently, 44% of newspaper editors “required disclosure of the blog, issued caveats over what subjects couldn’t be covered, or had outright bans on having personal blogs at all.” The rest treated it as a freelance issue; at most journalistic outlets, there are limits on what (and who) you can do freelance work for, and blogging is seen as a freelance opportunity (even if its unpaid and done in personal time).

I can’t say I’m terribly surprised by this, or sympathetic toward bloggers who get fired for not getting prior approval from their editors. The firing of Michael Tunison by the Washington Post was kind of silly, but he wrote on a website that routinely mocked two of the sports’ pages biggest stars*; even though he didn’t write the posts himself, I can understand why his editors might be upset. If I wrote for a group blog that routinely mocked Bill Kristol or Fred Barnes, I think my bosses at The Weekly Standard might get a little testy with me. Especially if I hadn’t told them about the venture beforehand.

*I can’t find a link to the boys at KSK making fun of Tony Kornheiser, but I’m pretty sure they did so at some point. By the way, full disclosure, I’m a huge fan of Kissing Suzy Kolber. They do great work. But I stand by my argument that journalists know the rules when it comes to freelancing and should be expected to follow them…and I have a feeling Tunison knew what he was doing when he posted a drunken picture of himself on the website and outed himself as a WaPo employee. My understanding is that he’s making more money now than he was as a cub reporter at the WaPo, has some other irons in the fire, and all-in-all is doing okay for himself.