Blogging on the Job

So several people have asked me what I think about this story of an employee at a major book publisher getting fired for blogging about her job and co-workers. The real question they mean to ask me is whether I'm afraid of getting fired for writing about my job, especially when I've made it explicitly clear where I work and I what I do. Well, the answer is NO. I am not afraid, which is not to say that I think they won't fire me - they very well could, and there seems to be very little legal footing for a person such as me to argue against it. I am not afraid of being fired because it would be a very stupid move on their part to fire me. I am good at what I do, and an essential part of that is how I think critically about my work and the industry as a whole. A blog is a wonderful way to put ideas out into a public forum where they can be considered, discussed, and torn apart if they're no good. Apparently this young woman's blog was less thoughtful and simply more bitchy, and that I guess is a shame. There's much to criticize about our industry. There's much to criticize about this company. I wish she had done it in a more thoughtful, provocative, and insightful way - something she could have argued was aiming to make our industry better. I stand by what I've said in these pages, and I would stand by them in the face of my employer, who is likely monitoring everything I do anyway. So here's an open invitation, Big Brother, throw me a pink slip for speaking my mind and we'll see who really loses.