Potomac Video store clerk Charles Williamson, 28, posted a message on his blog, Freelance Genius, Dec. 23 that described how he set up a movie rental account for MSNBC host Tucker Carlson at the MacArthur Boulevard store the day before.
"I could tell you what he and his ridiculously wasped-out female companion (wife?) rented if you really want to know," he wrote. "I won't tell you where he lives, though. That would be wrong and stupid." Williamson also joked that he wouldn't send 10,000 copies of Jon Stewart's best-selling political satire, "America (The Book)," to Carlson's home; Stewart ridiculed Carlson on "Crossfire" before the 2004 election.
Some time later, obviously having read the blog entry, Carlson came in and very angrily demanded that the blog entry be removed. The blogger complied. The end of the story, so far, is that Williamson lost his job after his employer found out about it. There may be some consolation that the blog, Freelance Genius, got a lot of referrals and traffic over this story.
Now, bloggers tend to stick together, especially when they are in conflict with big media types. But acknowledging that there are many facts about this I don't know, my opinion is that Williamson did wrong (whether it was harsh to fire him I can't really know).
A blog posting is not water-cooler gossip, it is potentially a message that can go around the world and stay visible for years to come to everybody on this planet. Bloggers should be extremely careful about what they write about their job, their employer and especially their customers.
You may note that you have never read anything on this blog about where I work. It is certainly no secret, but I don't want anyone googling for my employer, my colleagues, clients, students or customers, and then reading something controversial I write about something else (say, politics) and having this backfire on the people who send me my paycheck. If they google my name, that's fine, I stand for what I write.
Neither do I write about what happens at work. If something comes up I just have to mention in a blog posting, I would not include any details that would identify who I am writing about. I realise I am more cautious than many other bloggers, and I don't try to dictate what other bloggers should do, but I will certainly advise everyone to be very, very careful.
Iranian authorities are stepping up arrests and pressure on popular bloggers as part of a wider Internet clampdown launched after hard-liner Mahmoud Ahmadinejad became president last year, ending years of freewheeling Web access that once made Iran among the most vibrant online locales in the Middle East.
The Internet censors are busy. Their targets include sexual content, international politics, local grumbling, chat rooms and anything else that makes the Islamic leadership uneasy. Mohammad Ali Dadkhah, a prominent human rights lawyer, estimates at least 50 bloggers have been detained since last year.
Iran's hardline president has started blogging, recounting childhood memories, the country's Islamic Revolution and Tehran's war with Iraq in his first entry.
President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad's Web log also requests that readers participate in an online poll asking if they think the United States and Israel are "pulling the trigger for another world war."
State-run television announced the blog's launch Sunday, urging the public to send written messages to the president through the blog's Web site www.ahmadinejad.ir.
Ahmadinejad rambles a lot. I don't think he understands the new medium very well.
I just noticed that my blog just had its 1,000,000th page-view since I started it, making it the 15th Salon blog to reach that milestone.
Thanks to every one of you who made that happen!
I'm really honored that people from all corners of the world actually click in here once in a while to read my musings, links and more or less well thought-out opinions.
Daniel Pearl, deputy editor of the BBC's Newsnight, has managed to write one of the most ridiculous articles on blogging in living memory, which, as we know, takes quite a bit of effort. His article has the pseudo-threatening headline "we are watching you" (I wished I made this up!), attempting to intimidate bloggers by pointing out that the high and mighty BBC staff, armed with technorati and other search tools, are actually able to read what we write about them. I am really shuddering in fear here I sit!
Now, we have to remember the context here. The common complaint, indeed the only complaint I have ever heard, is that the mainstream media doesn't listen as much as it talks. Pearl, however, flips it around completely:
The thing I find strange about all this is that often people who write blogs, or contribute to them, somehow think that they are involved in a private forum.
I would be extremely surprised if this is true. Practically every blogger I know about wants to be read. Otherwise, you write your texts in Word and store them on your private hard disk. Undoubtedly, some bloggers, especially teenagers who write livejournals for their friends, sometimes get surprised if their words get outside that sphere, but this is certainly not representative.
Pearl has an alleged example of a wannabe-unread-blogger:
I recently came across a comment claiming Jeremy disliked recording his weekly podcast. I posted a response and the blogger seemed appalled - "the BBC's watching us - spooky" was his reply. But if you write something about us on the internet surely I have every right to read it and respond - that's not spooky.
Of course we have to take Pearl's word that this even happened, but assuming this is a correct description of events, it is still a massive stretch to jump from a singular example to a generalisation (Pearl asserted this happened "often") about bloggers.
Next time a blogger complains the BBC is totally deaf to criticism, I bet this unimaginative preemptive strike will be called up to assert "oh, you bloggers complain when we respond, and also when we don't respond." Now, that is a good excuse to stay deaf!
So, what do you think? Stick it on your blog and I'll respond.
PS: Obviously, this BBC journalist just shares the name of his late colleague Daniel Pearl, who was kidnapped and murdered by Islamist terrorists in Pakistan in 2002.
The survey found that almost one in 10 Internet users are bloggers and the audience for this group of online diarists is growing. Almost four in 10 of the approximately 147 million adult Internet users in this country say they read blogs.
The press emphasises the young bloggers, who often tend to tell about their own lives and experiences.
More than half of bloggers are under age 30.
This translates to almost half being over 30.
It's not as if this is an undesirable audience for advertisers...
Note, his blog was TAKEN DOWN by MSN people. Not blocked by the Chinese government.
Anti is one of China’s edgiest journalistic bloggers, often pushing at the boundaries of what is acceptable. (See a recent profile of him here, and an interview with Anti here.) His old blog at the U.S.-hosted Blog-city is believed to have caused the Chinese authorities to block all Blog-city blogs. In the final days of December, Anti became a vocal supporter of journalists at the Beijing Daily News who walked off the job after the top editors were fired for their increasingly daring investigative coverage, including some recent reporting on the recent police shootings of village protestors in the Southern China.
Microsoft, like Google and Yahoo, appears almost eager to help the Chinese authorities crack down on online dissent.
