I have been issued with a blog warning.
“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.
I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn't write.
Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:
“Things are going to happen that you’ll want to put on your Bebo” says a favourite family member, “But you’ve not to, okay?”.I don’t point out to her that I’m not on Bebo, and that what I do is called a Blog, for I know what she means and I don’t want to come across as argumentative as well as horrifically indiscreet and all loose cannony.
I am to go to a family event where members of an extended family whom I’ve never met but I am assured are wild and colourful and BLOGGABLE will be there. It’s going to be too much to bear but I am used to having to stifle the blogging urge when anything good happens. I worked in an FE college for six years for goodness sakes, every day was a blog I couldn't write.
Effectively there’s only three sets of folk that I am allowed to take the absolute rip out of:
Set One: Me
Set Two: Meeester, who claims I don’t blog enough about him and in fact the whole blog should be renamed “The World of Meeester” and should solely be about him, and more dangerously,
Set Three: Folk that will never ever read this blog ever and hence won’t know I’ve taken the piss out of them (think evil Canadian medics who call me “testy”)
This week someone who blogs to great acclaim got a similar yet far more official type of warning. NightJack the formerly anonymous police blogger had his identity outed by a journalist and was told to blog no more lest he lose his job. In fact, he’s already been given a written warning.
On finding out he was to be outed NightJack tried to get an injunction to stop his identity being revealed. However the judge saw no reason why anyone who chose to write about their life on the internet should be given any kind of privacy or protection. What a shame this is. Mainly I think for the police force itself. What amazing PR the NightJack blog has been. The police have a hard time gaining public sympathy and the fact that someone was blogging about what it was like at the sharp end of regular policing seemed to me to be a vent for unofficial view about what police officers have to face on a daily basis and a commentary on how they really feel about government law and order initiatives and news coverage of what they do. This is not only compelling for a reader but, secretly, I bet every police officer who read it was silently cheering NightJack on for putting their point of view across.
Another excellent emergency services blog (and latterly a book), Random Acts of Reality, written by an ambulanceman got the full backing of the Ambulance Service for that reason.
I can see both sides of the argument. On the one hand a no holds barred account of policing gives a view into a profession that those not in it will never otherwise empathise with, but on the other hand you could argue that the views represented are not being sanctioned by the police PR machine and may even prejudice court cases in more extreme examples. NightJack was always very careful to make sure no prejudicial details were included and that no names were ever used, but you can see the danger nonetheless, I suppose.
I’m sure that the police force were secretly happy to let an anonymous police officer blog in the way NightJack did and were privately pretty pissed off when his identity was revealed. As soon as his name was in the public domain they had to do something about him and more importantly, be seen to do something about him.
What I really don’t understand is the motives of the journalist who outed him. I can only assume they concern professional jealousy of his award winning success. How would that journalist feel, for example, if his sources were revealed? It's a shame that the judge didn't look upon the blogger's anonymity in the same way.
Anyway, it’s the blogger’s lot; publish and be damned...or lose your jobs and friends if you write up the really juicy stuff. All the best subjects are ones which you shouldn’t really touch. Like family events which are like an episode of Shameless.
Still as long as I’ve got Meeester taunting me to blog about him with japes like this to catch my attention, then I’ll never be short of material.
Meeester's latest cry for blogattention:
Putting fake flowers in the shrubbery
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15 comments:
Change the names? location? Sounds too good to resist Misssy :) I don't know what the statute of limitations on good gossip/blogging material but I have a file of true stories that will be slipped into fiction eventually ...
They outed him because he's dangerous competition. The more time people spend reading blogs like his, the less interest they'll have in paying for newspapers.
I must admit, my blog's pretty much died a death in the last year or so. Much as I'm careful about changing details and the like, I just feel afraid to say what I'd really like to a lot of the time, just in case. Which is a shame.
What the monkey said. Pure jealousy.
I wish I'd taken notes from work over the past several years, that would be great blog fodder for my retirement.
You think a FE college is bad? I was a litigation solicitor for 20 years doing work including personal injuries claims and divorces. And I can write about NONE OF IT. It almost hurts.
It's like any good art form- if it's honest it's worth it - but it's always going to be uncomfortable for some - especially those the art brings into question and no authority likes to be scrutinized in a truly open critical manner. A true shame for nightjack -but I bet his writing career will pay better and be safer !
You do have to wonder what the Journalists motivation was...and there is only really one conclusion that you can come to....pure jealousy!! It's a real shame for Nightjack.
I agree with Kate....change the names :-)
C x
I read about this through the week(possibly via link from yourself) to a kind of disgust.
I think you'd need to be doing something really juicy to make it worth the journalist/X's time to work out who you are if publishing anonymously. As a friend of mine said in his blog post the other day, there is a case for anonymity on the internet to end, under certain circumstances.
I must confess, I'm not really billythekid...
I don't shy from the possibly libellous though, to some support at times.
Other times I try to keep my head down though, like with the RA site. Everyone knows it's me and friends who run it if they know me from elsewhere online but I don't make it well known on the site itself as I've never had broken bones and don't really wanna start now!
...and you absolutely MUST publish the goods with changed names/events, we're all on tenterhooks...
I'm thinking of changing my name to Scarlet Blue. I like her better than me!
Sx
Bloggers seem to have a much greater cache in the UK than they do on this side of the vast ocean. Journalists here just sneer at us and then start their own blogs. Exceptions would be Perez Hilton who's an international superstar blogger now and Dooce, after whom the whole phenomena of blogging about work and getting fired for it was named. Ocassionally one of the journalist bloggers mentions me on his blog and once CBC radio wanted a bunch of us to appear on a chat progam except we all had to reveal our real identities so no one did. And this weekend the Fringe Festival is hosting an Ottawa blogger wine and cheese in an out-of-the-box effort to promote their stuff via local blogs. I love them. In summary, UK bloggers seem to get much more PR in the press than we do over here. I think that's worthy of closer investigation, don't you?
I leave teaching at the end of the academic year.
All my numptie students will then be fair game.
Ditto the headie
Ditto the staff
I'd imagine that NightJack was outed because the journo in question felt that he could gane same form of notoriety or publicity by doing so, or perhaps he suffered from the age old condition of 'because I could'.
The Demon's brother is a serving police officer and I know that anything, and I mean anything, that he were to do that may in the slightest way bring the Force into question is frowned upon with the utmost frowniness.
They should see him after a few Kronenbourgs then!
I'm with the others: now you can't ethically keep this stuff to yourself.
If I were reading a blog by someone I knew, and I knew they were writing about me when they told one hideous story or another seemingly about someone else (changed names and dates and so on), then yes, I can imagine my pulse suddenly going boomboomboom in my head. No matter how pissed off or aggrieved I was, though, I'd have to admit: Nobody who doesn't already know the story in question is going to care who it's about -- especially if it's told entertainingly enough.
Somehow, I simply cannot imagine your failing to entertain.
Do whatever the libel laws over there will let you get away with. And if they won't let you get away with something you need to get away with, go deeply anonymous on some other blog. :)
Where's that Dorothy Parker gene now?! For Christ's sake .... don't be nice now! This is our opportunity to revel in some good shit!
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