Trolls

I've been thinking about trolls lately.

Trolls are the jerks of the Internet: they show up only to bother people and derail conversations. They take advantage of the good will of people in online communities.

In general, I believe that people should be heard, and that the proper reaction to speech we don't like is to encourage MORE speech, not to silence the original speakers. But where does that leave us when the trolls arrive?

I watched with interest as the PETA folks re-discovered Darcy at Way Way Up last week. I've had threats before, but Darcy wins for the sheer number of angry anti-hunting comments.

Townie Bastard makes the point that these guys make a lot of noise, but rational people don't pay attention. I wonder if that's the case. I've certainly heard them on the radio lately, which is not necessarily proof that people listen to them: it could just show that the CBC feels that people need to know what they're saying.

But I do have to agree with his main point: when jerks show up on my favourite blogs, I don't really pay much attention to them. If anything, I become less sympathetic to their goals. In PETA's case, I'd be the first to agree that killing animals is bloody and horrible and should never be done lightly, but the way they present themselves wrecks any credibility they might have gained.

I'm not sure that other people feel the same way, though. What do you guys think?

"I love the questions you get sometimes."

Reader-submitted question: If you could reach through the computer and slap people who leave you stupid questions, would you exercise that privilege? And would it be a privilege or a right?

One of my favourite things about the Internet is that I really feel like I know people. The other day, I caught myself speaking about "Jackie in Rankin" as if she's a trusted friend, when in fact we've never met or even talked on the phone.

I know that my readers feel the same way about me. I get a lot of e-mail and comments from readers, and they almost all address me as if we know each other. I would be neglecting my duty as a blogger if I did not point out that most of the complaints are from people who are not actually jerks at all, just sarcastic folks who really understand what my blog is all about. They're not complaining so much as playing along. I love my readers, but I lurrrve these guys. I'm flattered that they like the complaints feature and want to be part of it. I'm friends with some of them in real life.

But I also get messages that make me wonder what the heck the person was thinking. Some readers truly seem to believe that I am only what they see on their screens each morning, as if I don't have an entire life that's much, much larger than the few things you'll see here.

It's easy to be a jerk on the Internet, but it's also easy to be an idiot. I've been told many times that I have a dry sense of humour, and I think that some people don't realise that if it seems like I can't be serious, I'm probably not being serious.

I hadn't thought about slapping people: I prefer to mock them. But that would certainly be an interesting option, wouldn't it? I'm pretty sure I wouldn't technically have a right to do this, though.

I do like the way you think. Thanks for your question.

Post-Mortem (ha!)

OK, I'm a loser. I'm chuckling over my own bad pun, and I hate puns. Let's just move past this and get on to business, shall we?

I think it's time to talk about post-mortems.

I don't know most of my readers, but I'm guessing that at least half of you have never worked as journalists and have never been through a post-mortem. This is one of the ways to improve the quality of a publication or show. There are lots of ways to do them: through a meeting or a written report, daily or weekly or even less often, with all of the staff or just certain people. The only constant is that a post-mortem is a candid discussion of what went wrong.

Yeah, they can be tough.

Post-mortems provide constructive criticism. The point is not to insult other people or their work ("YOU SUCK! And you have NO IDEA how to interview city councillors! I should have that beat!"), but to make the publication better by pointing out problems that can be fixed. Sometimes it's hard to be there. You really don't want to hear someone criticise the story you worked so hard on. It's even worse when you know their criticism is valid: your attempt at humour came off as pretentiousness, or you buried the lede, or the headline someone else put on your story was completely inaccurate.

I occasionally receive e-mails from people who think I hate the news media or just want to take shots at my former industry. Nothing could be further from the truth. Journalism is an honourable profession that is critical to maintaining a free society. That's why we need to make sure that job is done well. I do media critiques out of a sincere appreciation for the role of the media in our society and out of the affection I feel for reporters. I know we can all do better, but we can't criticise out of anger, entitlement or snobbery. We need to criticise because we really want the industry to improve.

Let's do a post-mortem on the last thing I published. I'll get us started.

Dear Megan,

I have no idea why you thought this was interesting enough to publish. And it appears that you didn't, either: I don't care much for posts that begin by warning readers to expect something boring. Why bother? Seriously, why did you put in the effort if you thought it was going to be boring? Why didn't you try to make it interesting?

You don't NEED three reasons in this post, but I think a third reason would have strengthened it a bit. Every extra argument helps when you're starting from a position of weakness.

The paragraphs are unbalanced. I don't usually pick at paragraph length, but this post struck me as odd. It's weird that you say your son is the most important reason for staying, and then you go on three times longer about your job. I'm not saying the first bit should have been longer: I'm saying you should have cut some of the stuff about being a writer. Let's get this over with quickly. I could be reading another blog that actually IS interesting.

Finally, I know that reader-submitted items are your schtick, but I'd like to see more background in them. Obviously, these questions come from somewhere. If you're simply going to publish a one-line question, can you at least link to whatever made the person want to know the answer? I'd like to see more depth to these posts. Context is everything, and that's exactly what's missing in so many of your posts that answer reader-submitted questions: Everything.

Thanks for trying. But please don't try this sort of thing again.

Yours truly in blogdom,
Megan, Reflections in the Snow-Covered Hills

Canadian Blog Awards

Voting ends tomorrow, so I'll be voting today in the Canadian Blog Awards. But first, I'm going to go to Darcy's to see who won the northern voting bloc.

If you want to vote for me no matter who won the northern run-off, you can use both of these links:

• Best Blog
• Best Blog Post Series
  

If you want to join our voting bloc, please go over to Darcy's first. I'm totally serious. As much as I'd like to be recognised, I don't want you to throw your vote away if another northerner can use it to get into the finals.

After the Best NWT Blogs contest ended, a reporter asked me about the purpose of the contest. Saskboy can correct me if I'm way off, but I don't think these contests actually tell anyone who has the best blog in Canada (or the NWT, in the case of our smaller version). You couldn't decide that, anyway. They tell you who has the most readers who are willing to vote. However, I think they're worthwhile because they draw attention to blogs in general. Every time I take part in one of these contests, I find a new blog I've never heard of before but continue to enjoy. For example, I was certain I knew who had the best photo blog in the north until Darcy pulled the northern nominees together: I'd never been to Kluganoch Corner before. (That photo of the eye is amazing.)

I love it when northerners get recognition for a job well done, and that's why I'm participating in the northern voting bloc. Please consider voting today: it will only take a few minutes and the link is at the top of this post.

"Did nothing spark enough thought in you to maybe write about it?"

Reader-submitted item: Sparking public debate is, for me, the most important thing journalists do. I just wish to see more of that debate talked about on your blog.

This really resonated with me. I'm writing this post in the middle of the night -- I couldn't sleep because I was thinking about what to say. It's very true. As a reporter, you know you've got a great story when you hear people talking about your coverage.

(Forces of Evil: This is not the same thing as reporting it well. You know that. Go away.)

There are quite a few NWT bloggers now, but I think only three of us blog about northern media. The other two are far harsher than I am: they are not nearly as tolerant of errors, nor do they explain journalism issues. As a group, we do not tend to write about things in the news. I notice this same trend in Nunavut and Yukon: the non-journalist bloggers don't usually write about things they've heard on CBC or read in the paper. We tend to write about our own lives and personal interests.

As a journalist, this has got to suck. When you're a reporter, you always have a nasty little voice in the back of your head telling you you're not good enough. (In some newsrooms, the editor fills this role; in others, it's up to the journalist to tear herself apart.) To be putting content out day after day, hoping to get a response, and continually getting NOTHING back from readers -- well, that has to be disheartening.

I really like reading other blogs about current events, but I don't usually do that sort of writing myself. I agree with this reader: it would be nice to have more of it.

As a good-faith gesture, I am offering to do a post on a topic chosen by this reader. E-mail me to set it up: dryas at theedge dot ca. It can be any issue that doesn't involve my employer: I stay away from those issues completely because I do not want it to appear that this blog has anything to do with work. (No good can come of that.)

Thanks for your question.

Canadian Blog Awards: The Northern Round

SPECIAL NOTE: Saskboy, look away. :)

OK, remember the Canadian Blog Awards? Yes, as Mongoose would say, that waste of time where people get together to give awards to each other? (Zach Wells would probably compare the CBAs to the Governor General's Award for Poetry.)

Well, we northern bloggers are trying to pool our resources to get one of us into the finals. Last time, we sent one vote one way and another vote another way, and Small Dead Animals, Daveberta and Yarn Harlot drove right over us. Clearly, that's not working.

Here's the process:
1) During the nomination stage, anyone can nominate any Canadian blog in one or more categories (New Blog, Best Post, etc.).
2) All nominations are reviewed to make sure they fit into the category. For example, you can't nominate this blog for Best Feminist Blog: although I am a woman, I don't write about feminism. The nominations that make the cut are put into a poll, and everyone has several days to vote.
3) The top five vote-getters are put into a second poll. The winner of that round wins the category.

Last time, we weren't coordinated at all, and we all lost by a mile. While most of us would probably like to be recognised, we cannot waste our votes on a blog that has no chance of moving forward in the category. (Think of Survivor.) That sounds cold, but I include myself in that. Don't vote for me if Townie Bastard has a better chance of winning.

Darcy at Way Way Up is pulling all of the northern nominees together. If we can decide who to support in each category, we have a better chance of getting some recognition for northern blogs.

Now, you absolutely do not have to be part of this, and you don't have to vote in the CBAs at all. If you really want to vote for Small Dead Animals, please do that. But if you want to support a northern blog, please go over to Darcy's first. We will have more influence as a group. There is no rush to vote: voting closes November 29th, so we have a few days to hash this out.

You suck! Signed, Anonymous

Anonymous comments are in the news lately. Someone posted satirical comments about the federal election on the CBC's website.

I didn't see the messages, but Name of Paper Withheld reported that they included a reference to the Conservative candidate levitating while bathed in white light (ha!) and our current MP smoking wood pellets from a bong (HAHAHAHAHA). The First People's National Party candidate was described as chanting "treaty, treaty, treaty: I have a treaty". Some people say this was racist. Name of Paper Withheld reports that when a reporter called her about it, she pointed out that she has a treaty.

She DOES have a treaty.

Although nobody can confirm it, the powers that be at Name of Paper Withheld have decided that their former reporter Terry Halifax is the one who wrote the comments. He is now a town councillor; if he wasn't, nobody would care.

I happen to know Terry: he took over after my buddy Mack The Hack left, and we are friendly because we worked Up There at the same time (but for different news media). He is refusing to say whether he wrote the comments.

Name of Paper Withheld's editorial board has this to say:

Many people, if asked, would likely admit to hiding their identity when posting comments online. It's the curse of the Internet. All too often people hide their distasteful and outlandish opinions with a fictitious name or address.

Yeah, you can laugh.

But this is leading somewhere.

I read the CBC's comment section at least once a day. It is full of garbage, and the Paper of Record's comment section is just as bad. I bet Name of Paper Withheld would have the same problem if they allowed comments on their stories. This makes me really mad. And everyone's been talking about Terry like he's a racist psychopath, when these comments are not even close to the worst things I've seen on the CBC's website. I don't understand why we're all upset about Terry and the satire he may or may not have written. The CBC should bear some responsibility for the things it publishes.

All news media publish feedback from readers, listeners and viewers. This is not new. What is new is that they appear to have thrown out their standards about what to publish. This is partly because it is almost impossible to monitor all of the comments people send to a large national media organisation's website. Although they apply editorial standards to the letters they publish in their dead-tree versions and the TalkBack they broadcast during their shows, you can post any sort of unverified crap on their websites.

I don't know why, but even the nicest people can turn into jerks online when they hide as anonymice. It's cowardly and stupid. If you really believe something, put your name behind it. We'll all respect you more when we know you're not trying to hide your identity.

I didn't see the post that caused all of the fuss, but I laughed at several of the snippets Name of Paper Withheld published. They were obviously satire. I bet the CBC would have accepted that post as a local column, and if parts of it really were offensive, they would have asked the writer to change those bits. That's because they feel an obligation to keep racist material off their news and current-affairs programs. They should take the same care with their website.

CBC would never, ever allow someone on air anonymously. Even a confidential source has to give his or her name to a reporter, and usually at least one of the higher-ups has to know who the source is and why the news organisation should protect his or her identity. You cannot tell a reporter that your name is "JustPeeChee" and expect to be taken seriously.

People like to say the Internet has changed everything about the news media. I disagree. It has changed many things, but the same rules of journalism should still apply.

Geez.

Anonymous jerks invaded one of my favourite northern blogs this week. I have a bit of a soft spot for Townie Bastard, considering that we have almost identical career arcs. He made the mistake of commenting on the nastiness we're seeing in the American election. Apparently someone wanted to make it clear that the nastiness can be extended to people who aren't involved with politics and just happen to have personal blogs.

It is probably my background as a reporter, but I do not like anonymous Internet assholes. I am convinced that if you want to be taken seriously, you should post under your own name or under a handle you use consistently. (Like "Torq", AKA Philosopher King.) I allow anonymous jerks to post here because I believe that it is the best way to show the rest of my readers what idiots they actually are. If they were at all interested in having a conversation with people who simply disagree with them, they would be more open about who they really are.

The funniest thing is that people aren't actually anonymous in the north. This place is too small to allow for true anonymity. By trying to hide, they only look more pathetic. I do occasionally get anonymous drive-by insults from people like the PETA wackos, but they are complete morons who usually can't string a sentence together. (This is still my favourite reader-submitted complaint of all time.)

I'm glad I read blogs written by people who feel the same way I do. I want to read those nasty anonymous comments. They almost always reinforce my belief that the blogger was right in the first place.

You have no secrets

Reader-submitted question: Do tell what tracker you use! I've always wondered how you could "tell" what people visited your site when how and why.....Share your secrets, oh wise one.

I use a couple of tracking sites, but the one I use most often is Sitemeter.

The software tells me a lot. For example, you might be someone like this:
This person from Toronto has come to my site through Google Blog Search, and she's looking for information about herself. If I mention her name, she'll be back. And none of us need that, do we? I think we can all agree that we don't need any more lousy grammar, swearing or incoherent threats. Let's just ignore her.

The software isn't perfect. It can estimate the length of time you spend on my site, but it always under-estimates that time. That's because it uses link clicks to know that you're still there. If you don't click any links, it thinks you stayed for 0 seconds, even if you looked at the page for an hour. It can't tell if you get my posts through an RSS reader, although I have a separate tracker for that and know I have a few dozen subscribers. It doesn't count people who read my posts at NWT Blogs, either. I'm not sure how many people visit that site or subscribe to that feed.

I really like to look at my stats. They tell me what people are looking for and what they like to read once they're here. The Being David Hasselhoff contest consistently gets traffic. (Yes, I'll do another one in a few months.) Lately, I have had a lot of interest in my posts about the American election. The Fleetwood Mac fetishists are always around, too. This information helps me to write things you will want to read.

Over time, I recognise IP addresses. For example, I can tell when someone from CBC visits, but I can't tell which location the person's in: all CBC-ers have the same IP address and are logged as being from Toronto. Before I figured this out, I thought I had a stalker in the Toronto Broadcasting Centre. (Hmmm. Maybe I do.)

This person from Spain came by the other day and discovered a photo of David Hasselhoff sans underwear:
I can't blame him for staring at the image, reloading the page over and over for five minutes. Who wouldn't?

A reader e-mailed me last week, concerned that I would think she was a loser because she accidentally left my site open while she did the laundry. Please let me reassure you that I don't think any less of people who stay on my blog for long periods of time. Heck, I usually have it open in a tab. I only mock the people who show up and do a ton of searches for words related to themselves. (Egomaniac alert!)

Yes, I can see you when you do this, and I can tell that it's you.

Stats are very useful, but I also use feedback from readers to decide what to write about. I love comments, and some readers choose to e-mail me or call instead of leaving comments. You guys are amazing people, and you have made this blog what it is today.

Thanks for your question.

Because you asked

Reader-submitted complaint: You blog at work.

No, I don't. This is a personal blog. It's all about me. I maintain it on my own time, using a computer that I own, and I write about my own personal opinions and experiences. I write about work all day long, into the night and half of the weekend, and I honestly have no interest in blogging about it when I finally get home.

(SPECIAL NOTE TO READERS WHO HAPPEN TO BE MY BOSS: Sorry, but it's true.)

I don't personally do it, but I am not opposed to blogging at work as long as people get their work done. I'm not even opposed to blogging about what happens on the job, within reason. In fact, some of my favourite northern bloggers often mention their 9-5 lives. I'm glad that they love their work so much that they want to share those experiences with the world. I love my job just as much as they do, but I set up this blog so I would be able to write about the other things that interest me. I write about work for hours every day. This space is mine.

In the interest of full disclosure, I will tell you what I do in my office that has any relation to this blog.

I read comments and sometimes respond to them. Comments to this blog come in on an RSS feed, so I get an automatic notification when someone leaves me a message. I usually read comments within a few hours of the time you leave them, but sometimes I don't get around to checking the feed because I'm too busy. I'm not ignoring you; I'm just distracted because work is my priority while I'm at work. Sometimes I'm at work on weekends or into the evening: again, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just too busy to respond right away.

I read blogs on my RSS feed and add them to my sidebar. I usually refresh the list with new posts about once a day. Again, sometimes I don't get to this.

I sometimes get ideas for new posts. In the first year or so, I used to save ideas in Blogger: I'd open a new post, write a sentence or two to remind me what I wanted to write about, and save it as a draft. I later realised that when I did this, my posts were published with a time stamp showing the time I started the draft (11:03 a.m. and so on). I stopped doing this because I figured that eventually someone would accuse me of blogging at work. Now that I think about it, I could have used the "post options" menu to change the time stamp. I really should go back to doing this. It was a good system.

I check my site meter. If you're on my site, I know who you are, where you came from and what you did. To pick an example at random, you might obsessively reload my site all day and do searches for words related to yourself. I know you did this. Or you might decide to read every post I've ever written. I know you did this, too. I can even tell if you're at work when you did it. Really, you shouldn't spend hours looking at my blog while you're at work, but that's between you and your boss.

No, I don't blog at the office. It usually takes about an hour to do one of my longer posts; although I sometimes have lulls in my work, I almost never have an entire hour with nothing to do. If I did have that much free time, I probably wouldn't sit in my office, I'd eat a sandwich and read the Paper of Record.

Thanks for your complaint.

Fun with Wordle

The other day, I was playing around with Wordle, a program that scans a website and then produces an image that displays the most common words on the site. Words that appear more often are larger on the screen. Here's the image Wordle spat out for this blog:

Hmmm.

I can't say I'm surprised. And here's the Wordle for Steve's videoblogging account:
And the blogs my family members write:



And a sample of my friends:





The best part is that they are all immediately identifiable.

And now for something different

What do you think of this blog design? Is it "me"?

Click the photo to enlarge it on your screen.

A meme from Rankin Inlet

Jackie has tagged me for a meme. I am supposed to have my husband tell you three things about me.

This is going to be over very quickly. Steve's mind is still on the oiling incident from the other night.

1. Megan is great with grammar.
2. Megan is a great cook.
3. [CENSORED.]

Sorry. I really can't get into details like that on the blog. Apparently children read this.

Lest they trample them under their feet

Reader-submitted cartoon: I am only sending this because it is cute. It is not a commentary.

I see.

This reader has been sending me cartoons for months, all with the not-so-subtle message that bloggers are losers. I am only posting this because he is trained in the use of riot gear and pepper spray, so I don't want to know what would happen if I ended up on his bad side.

Since you guys clearly think that I am a weirdo who has absolutely no effect on the world, I will tell you that I am getting ready for the blog share. That means that there will be a few new people around here for the next couple of days. I hope some of them will want to stick around and maybe even leave their own reader-submitted complaints.

The blog share is on Wednesday. Tomorrow I will post a list of the participants: please consider going through the links. My post will be on one of those sites. I already know who is hosting my anonypost and who will be posting here. They are both great bloggers, so I can't wait to see how it all turns out.

Who's up for some self-denigration?

For some reason, Saskboy volunteered to be savaged by the guys at Ask And Ye Shall Receive, who, predictably, savaged him:

"From all accounts I’ve gathered in my sleuthing of this analogy, anal-sex is uncomfortable, at least at first; Abandoned Stuff is the blog-equivalent of banal-sex, in which the adrenaline-gland is dry-humped by the flaccid cock of mediocrity, and, holy fucking hell, I’ll put that up against anal-sex on the "uncomfortable" scale any goddamn day of the week."

As a Canadian, I was at first horrified by this comparison, but then became intrigued as I considered the possibilities. I think we should all come up with similar descriptions of our blogs, although ours should be grammatically correct. I'm totally serious. I'll get you started, but I want you to post yours in the comments:

Reading Megan's blog is like having my nipples twisted: I'm slightly turned on, but it's completely lost in the pain and my horror that it's actually happening.

I might make that the tag line for my blog when I move over to snowcoveredhills.com.

Your turn.

What do you think?

I would appreciate your thoughts on this design. The bits and pieces have not been filled in, but I think you can see how it would all work. You can click on the image to increase its size on your screen.

Do you like the colours? The fonts? The girl? (She needs bangs and blue eyes, but those are minor details.) Should I ask my multi-talented friend Amy to tinker with this design or start over? Do I need something with stronger colours or a tougher image? If you have specific suggestions, we would like to hear them.

I don't know what to do now

I now own snowcoveredhills.com. I have no idea what to do with it, though. Everything that's over there now is just there to hold the spot. Web design is definitely not one of my strengths.

Fortunately, the fabulous and talented Amy is going to help me out. I figured out how to log in, but the tips for getting started begin this way:

1. Unzip the package in an empty directory.

Unzip which package? Am I really so dumb that I can't figure this out?

If this works, I plan to move over there. Don't worry: I will give you lots of lead time so you don't get lost, and I'll put a link up at the top of this blog.

Grrrr

I feel a little like the old-time treasure hunters. I really believe that I'm searching for something that is just out of my reach. If I only put in more time, or pay more money, or look at another website, I will be rewarded. I am a moron.

Yes, I am still looking at blog designs. No, I am not any happier than I was before. If anything, I am LESS happy, because I spent the weekend sitting in my chair and staring at the computer instead of enjoying the lovely weather we are finally having in Name of Town Withheld.

I now have Wordpress and Typepad accounts. The main advantage, as far as I can tell, is that the URLs match my blog title. (When I started this blog two years ago, I named it "Steve & Megan", because I thought Steve would write here, too. I renamed it after he only posted once in the first year.) I am spending hours looking at templates, convinced that the perfect one is just a click away.

I am an idiot.

AAAAAHHHHHHH

I am thinking about changing the way my blog looks. That is Megan-speak for "I am frustrated and tired".

I spent hours mucking around in code, trying to switch to a three-column format. Like this, only with the Anime Sweetheart at the top instead of the red bar:
I figured this would be a better use of space than the current two-column format. You might think this would be easy. You would be wrong. Very wrong. I think I may have developed Tourette's syndrome from the stress.

You can see that there are only two columns here and that it really doesn't look any different than the last time you visited. There is a good reason for this: After hours of stress, I decided to go back to the way things were. Isn't that GREAT? I put in hours of work for absolutely no benefit! What is this, the federal government? And after all of that, the joke was still on me: I lost all of my widgets AND the blog header half of you say I should change. They all had to be put back manually.

I love Wordpress blogs, but I am not keen to spend hours installing updates every few months. Blogger is nice and simple, and I don't have enough patience to muck around in code all the time. I don't even have enough patience to look at much code, which is part of my problem.

I am tempted to just pony up the money to get my blog designed by a real designer. You know, someone who knows what he or she is doing. There is no real reason I haven't done this yet. I can stay with nice, comfortable Blogger AND have a design that suits my needs. It is just a matter of taking the time to do it.

The other problem is that I apparently have no idea who I am. I feel like the site design should be about me, or at the very least make sense with my title. Am I snow-covered hills?
Of course, there's always this reader-submitted photo:
I've been told that the only thing I'd need to do to make this image perfect would be to Photoshop Baywatch over the TV screen.

Speaking of which, there's always our old standby:
But that won't work. I am not nearly hot enough to withstand constant scrutiny, especially not when compared to a man-god like the Hoff.

I admit that I often feel like Townie Bastard's mascot (on the right, under "About Me").

Yeah, I definitely need to suck it up and hire a designer. Any thoughts on what I should tell him or her?

A news tip

Reader-submitted: Hey Megan, I remember awhile ago you linked to the article about the ex-CNN producer who was fired because of his blog. After reading that item, I decided to survey over 250 newspaper editors and publishers to see if they would allow their journalists to maintain personal blogs without prior approval. I published my findings over here. Anyway, I thought this was something you might find interesting.

I definitely do. Thanks for putting this effort in.

As my readers know, journalists love to demand information from random people. Then they drum their fingernails on the tabletop in an annoyed manner to encourage a rapid response, yell at the person, question his numbers, and ultimately slam the phone down.

So the results of this survey are fascinating.

My reader asked 250 news organizations the same question:

Would you allow your staff writers, without prior approval, to blog during their free time after work as long as they don’t write about the beats they cover for your newspaper?

EXAMPLE: A staff writer for your newspaper covers the local courts and cops beat and then goes home and writes in his personal blog about the national presidential election. He does this without asking for your permission. Would you be fine with this?

Only 39 responded. You can bet that if these news organizations only got a 16% response rate to their questions, we would all be hearing about the RIGHT OF THE MEDIA TO ASK QUESTIONS and HOW LONG WILL THE FASCISM CONTINUE.

Of the 39 who responded, almost half have rules about blogging: it's either not allowed at all, disclosure is required, or certain topics are unbloggable.

What do you guys think?