When you write about your own company, you’ve got to expect some push-back. Blog about your industry and you can expect a downpour.
That’s what happened when one newspaper intern, Jessica DaSilva reported on a company matter at the newspaper she was working at, the Tampa Tribune. Of course, this was not a report in her paper, but it had her byline (on her blog.) This was not about any company matter, it was a post about a layoff, and the editor in chief explaining it to the newsroom.
What made this blog post and the social media newsroom discussion that ensued acrimonious (and relevant to anyone in a job with analog-digital tension) could be summed up with this statement from the editor:
“We can see a better future for journalism right across the bridge on the other side, but the bridge is on fire, and if we just stand here, we are going to burn up with it.”
But the downpour came not from her employer as you probably imagined–for blogging about something as sensitive as a layoff — but from people who were angry that this young inexperienced person supported the ‘innovate or or obliterate’ concept. More than 200 comments later, she was ridiculed for a lot of things including blogging about a newsroom (“If I were your boss, I’d fire you for posting this. Is this your first job?”), her spelling and her misplaced enthusiasm ( “I really do admire your enthusiasm, but your post comes off extremely naive.”)
Many others rallied in support. When someone threatened her saying:
“I’m an editor at a medium-sized paper and I’m sending your name around to everyone I know in the business to make sure that you are never hired anywhere.“
another responded:
Hoipolloireport 
“Michael: I’m an editor at a gigantic website and before that was in the print business for 20 years up to the largest metros, and believe me, if you had a full name, I would also send it around to everybody I knew to tell them not to hire the idiot who is willing to write off the career of a young woman who truly has a passion for a trouble profession — something we really need right now — because of something she wrote in a single blog entry when she was just starting out.”
The bridge was definitely on fire!
The digital world to many must seem scary and disruptive, but resistance is futile. John Byrne of Businessweek put it this way, describing his recent leap from print into digital journalism:
“I think of the web as not just another medium, but rather a new utility, like electricity. It’s print, radio, and television all in one, except better and much more than all of them together.”