1. clock
  2. The Web about the Web

The Web about the Web

By clock on August 2, 2008.

CNN creates blogging policy, encourages employees to engage in sockpuppetry:

Chez Pazienza, a former CNN producer who was fired six months ago for having a personal blog, obtained a copy of the new blogging policy that his former employer sent out to all staff (I've also copy and pasted it below). While it allows employees to blog, they have to get it approved by a supervisor and it bars them from mentioning anything that CNN would cover -- in other words, it keeps them from talking about just about anything but their own belly lint. And even that would be ruled out if we all found out tomorrow that a new form of AIDS is spread through belly lint.

What especially caught my eye was the rules for commenting on other websites or chat rooms:

The 10 Commandments of the Social Web:

It's clear that the social web has become increasingly complex and with so many places to communicate it is frequently challenging to figure out where the best place to go and talk is. This blog and others are all striving to cover the numerous tools available to you to express yourself to those that you know and those that you'll never meet or speak to.

Live Webcams: Hospitals and Labs:

Would you like to watch live what's happening at a hospital or in a lab? Here are some options:

Also Baruch Marine Lab Web Cam and University of South Carolina Roach Camera.

Tags
Blogging
Media
Technology

More like this

ScienceOnline'09: Interview with Katherine Haxton
The series of interviews with some of the participants of the 2008 Science Blogging Conference was quite popular, so I decided to do the same thing again this year, posting interviews with some of the people who attended ScienceOnline'09 back in January. Today, I asked Katherine Haxton of the…
Hey, You Can't Say That! Or can you?
I have received, from a friend, a draft of an intra-institutional guideline for employee blogging and online behavior. The employer has been anonymized. The document has been written by non-scientist non-bloggers at the institution and is making the rounds prior to formal review and approval. We…
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Andrea Novicki
Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years'…
ScienceOnline2010 - interview with Mark MacAllister
Continuing with the tradition from last two years, I will occasionally post interviews with some of the participants of the ScienceOnline2010 conference that was held in the Research Triangle Park, NC back in January. See all the interviews in this series here. You can check out previous years'…

For some reason, my comments on the CNN story at bloggasm got moderated away...go there and read the policy...you're not even supposed to discuss the news with family members...it's creepy.

OK, I posted my comment there as well:

"Like with Chez, they are paranoid, and they are a couple of decades out of date in their understanding of the media.

They have armies of potential loyalists and defenders and PR folks out there on the Web and instead of letting them lose to do the PR job for CNN in their free time, they are stifling them. And they may thus breed resentment and this policy may result in even more disgruntled employees who will start looking for jobs in more enlightened media organizations - online."

Let's see if my comment remains there or gets deleted. Perhaps you should try again (perhaps tweak something about it, perhas you used a word that triggered some spam blocker?).