Guardsman Punished for Blog

Blogger Leonard Clark, a member of the Arizona National Guard (U.S.) and currently stationed in Iraq has been busted down in rank to private first class and fined.
According to a report in the Army Times
Clark “has been punished for violating operational security and for 11 counts of disobeying orders.”

Spc. Leonard A. Clark was busted down [...]

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Wal-Mart as Censor

Via Romanesko, I found a report in the Pensacola News Journal detailing a regional Wal-Mart manager’s attempt to pressure the paper into firing one of its columnists, Mark O’Brien. In one of his columns O’Brien had discussed the hidden cost of Wal-Mart’s price savings, primarily in additional health care burden borne by the state, since [...]

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Morpheme Tales in Oakland Tribune

An article on blogfirings came out today in the Oakland Tribune called “Bloggers may face management wrath.” The article quoted me extensively and mentioned Morpheme Tales. They managed to botch the URL of this blog, however, and despite asking them to fix it — a very easy thing to do especially online — they did [...]

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Blogging Policy Article in Network World

In June Network World magazine published an article called, “Does your company have an official blogging policy?“
If you have found that one of your employees has already begun writing about your company in a blog and you’re not happy with his take on corporate life, you may well be within your right to pull the [...]

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"Greek" Poems

This is a group of poems that were occasioned either by reading a Greek poet (Seferis, Cavafy) or by reflecting on an imagined Greek landscape.
***

The Oranges of Eurotas
After George Seferis
1.
The half-moon, a smoky golden boat
Beached on the black gravel of the night sky
In a notch between two buttes
Over Fairfield. A semi
Hauling new cars down a [...]

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Arab Shame, German Shame

There is a lot of talk about how the shame and humiliation of the Arabs (at the hands of history, at the foot of the colonizer, by the Western world) is a contributing factor to the creation of the modern Arab terrorist. This motivation is not restricted to the Middle East, however, as I was [...]

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Real Estate Blogging

Today, at the invitation of my friend Brian Schartz, I visited the offices of the John L. Scott Real Estate firm in Eugene, Oregon to teach him and his partners how to blog.
Brian, along with Elliott Braaten and Bill Skillern run a related separate business called EugeneREO.
They all wanted to take a step out and [...]

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Don’t Blog If You Want Work

The Chronicle of Higher Education recently published an article in its “First Person” section called, “Bloggers Need Not Apply.” In it the author warns that if you want a job, don’t blog.
Ironically, the author is publishing his personal opinion and experiences under a pseudonym online. Perhaps, since he’s not publishing in reverse chronological order, he’s [...]

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Shareholder Effect on the Media

There is an excellent article called “Downward spiral,” from SPJ’s Quill magazine. It was written by the folks at Grade the News and talks about ethical issues in journalism today and the effect thereof on quality.
One of the authors’ points, one that I made myself, is that shareholder lust for media company gold is making [...]

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Murdoch Warns Against Complacency

On April 13, News Corporation’s CEO Rupert Murdoch gave a speech to the Society of Newspaper Editors warning them to stop ignoring “digital” media.
Scarcely a day goes by without some claim that new technologies are fast writing newsprint’s obituary. Yet, as an industry, many of us have been remarkably, unaccountably complacent. Certainly, I didn’t do [...]

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