Statistics on Fired Bloggers
October 9, 2006 by Curt
I became interested in creating a definitive list of people who have been fired or disciplined for blogging for two reasons. The first was that I was eliminated from consideration for a job due to this blog, the second was that I was hired to write a story on this topic.Below are the are the instances of blog-related job actions I have found so far. I am making no commentary about the businesses involved. The reason for this is that the accounts are hard to verify. Companies that have fired or disciplined people are reluctant for legal (and public relations) reasons to comment.
I have heard people say, both about this list and about others, “No one has been fired simply for blogging.” There have been a few people whose situations seem pretty close, but let’s accept that statement. Saying “no one ever got fired for blogging” is like, when a worker gets fired after having been overheard complaining about his boss, saying “no one ever got fired for talking.” That’s not the point. At least, it is not my point. The question of what people have the right to say while retaining their employment is an interesting one, but not one I am attempting to answer.
I am still interested in the topic, so if you or anyone you know can provide me with additional information, or correct the information I already have, please email me at bobfolder [at] gmail [dot] com, or post away right here. However, anonymous postings that do not provide the fired person’s name, the name and URL of their blog, where they work or worked, and the details of your situation, will not be included for reasons which, if you neglect to provide the above-mentioned information, probably won’t seem clear to you.
FIRED
Chez Pazienza (Deus Ex Malconent — 02/12/08; CNN (American Morning), New York, NY
Llewellyn Kriel (Thought Leader) — 11/07; The Sowetan, Johannesburg, South Africa
Heather (last name withheld by request) and three others (Goldilochs) — 11/06; Alaska Airlines, Anchorage, AL
Jason Izquierdo (MySpace) — 11/06; Richmond County Sheriff’s Department, Augusta, GA
Tom Reynolds (thomasrDotOrg) — 10/06; Telstra, Melbourne, Australia
Jessa Jeffries (I had a comples named after me) — 05/06; The Academy of Natural Sciences, Philadelphia, PA
“A Microbiology Grad Student” (The (Former) Life of a Microbiology Grad Student) — 06/06; University of Wisconsin-Madison, Madison, Wisconsin
Catherine Sanderson (Petite Anglaise) — 07/06; Dixon Wilson, Paris, France
“LWKnitter” (MySpace) — 05/06; KGET TV, Bakersfield, CA
Paul Andrew Juliano (Hyper Cubicle) — 04/06; Bentley College, Waltham, MA
Stephanie (Stefr.net) — 02/06; Atlanta, GA
Richard Eid (7 Years with Corporate America) — Johnson Controls; 12/05; Cleveland, OH
“Silver Tree” (Silver Blog) — an airline (United?); 12/05; ?
Kelly Kreth (Charmingly Neurotic) — Dwelling Quest; 9/05; New York, NY
Rachael (name withheld by request) (site withheld by request) — FCF Schmidt Public Relations; 9/05; Plymouth Meeting, PA
27 employees (MySpace) — Automobile Club of Southern Californai; 8/05; San Diego, CA
Nadine Haobsh (Jolie in NYC) — Ladies Home Journal; 7/05; New York, NY
Lance Salyers (Ragged Edges) — Montgomer County Prosecutor’s Office, 6/05; Dayton, OH
8ZERO8 (8ZERO8) – 5/05; Texas (?)
Mark Jen (Plaxoed!) — Google, 1/05; Mt. View, CA
Karsh (BlackGayBlogger) – AutoTrader.com, 1/05; Atlanta, GA
Rob Cotter (Sousalizard/apparently defunct) – Blockbuster Video, 1/05; Seattle, WA
Joe Gordon (Woolamaloo Gazette) – Waterstone’s Books, 1/05; Edinburgh, Scotland
Jeremy C. Wright (Ensight) — Health Sciences Center, 1/05; Winnipeg, MB, Canada
Angelo Villagomez (If I Could Change One Thing) — Kres Chophouse, 12/04; Orlando, FL
Daniel Finney (Rage, Anguish and Bad Craziness in St. Louis/apparently defunct) — St. Louis Post-Dispatch, 12/04; St. Louis, MO
“Romiustexis” (Self Help Center) — Maricopa County Superior Court of Arizona Self Help Center and Library, 11/04; Tempe, Arizona
Jason Graham (Jgram World V2.0) – accounts practice firm, 10/04 – Essex, England
Ellen Simonetti (Diary of a Flight Attendant) — Delta Airlines, 9/04; Austin, TX
Peter Whitney (Gravity Spike) — Wells Fargo-owned brokerage Ragen MacKenzie, 8/04; Pacific Northwest
Joyce Park (Troutgirl) — Friendster, 8/04
[name and blog withheld by request] — Nunavut Tourism, 7/04; Nunavut/Vancouver, BC, Canada
Jessica Cutler (Washingtonienne/archive) — staffer for Mike DeWine (R-Ohio), 5/04; Washington, DC
Amy Norah Burch — (What is Sparky?) Committee on Degrees in Social Studies at Harvard University, 5/04
Rachel Mosteller (The Sarcastic Journalist) — Durham Herald-Sun, 4/04; Durham, NC / Houston, TX
Rob Smith (Gut Rumbles) — Kerr-McGee, 11/03 ; Savannah GA
Michael Hanscom (Eclecticism) — Microsoft, 10/03; Redmond, WA
Gregg Easterbrook (Easterblogg/defunct) — ESPN, 10/03; Washington, DC
Matthew Brown (apparently defunct) — Starbucks, 9/03; Toronto, ON, Canada
Justin Winokur (Jwinokur) — Apple Computer, 9/03; San Jose, CA
Veronica (Moxie Pop/apparently defunct) — 6/03
Iain Murray (The Edge of England’s Sword) — Statistical Assessment Service (DC nonprofit), 1/03; Washington, DC
Steve Olafson (Brazosport News) — Houston Chronicle, 08/02; Houston, TX
Heather Armstrong (Dooce) — 2/02; Salt Lake City, Utah
Ian Lind (ILind) — Honolulu Star-Bulletin, 3/01; Honolulu, HI
DISCIPLINED
Philip Hambrick & Colby Harrell(MySpace) — 11/16; Richmond County Sheriff’s Department, Augusta, GA (suspended for 10 and two days respectively)
Two Alaska Airline employees (MySpace) — Alaska Airlines, Achnorage Alaska (unionized employees disciplined)
Spc. Leonard A. Clark (Leonard Clark, National Guardsman) — 860th Military Police Company, Arizona National Guard, 7/05; Baghdad, Iraq (busted down to private, fined, according to his blog, he is under a “gag order”)
Major Michael Cohen (67cshdocs) — 67th Army Combat Support Hospital, Forward Operating Base Marez, 1/05; Mosul, Iraq (instructed to remove and cease updating his blog)
Mark Cuban (Blog Maverick) — Dallas Mavericks, 11/04; Dallas, TX (fined for allegedly disparaging remarks on his blog)
Denis Horgan (denishorgan.com) — Hartford Courant, 3/03; Hartford, CT (ordered to stop blog or be fired)
ELIMINATED FROM CONSIDERATION FOR EMPLOYMENT
GayBlackBlogger (Karsh) — 12/04; Atlanta, GA
Curt Hopkins (Morpheme Tales) — Minnesota Public Radio, 12/04; Eugene, OR/St. Paul, MN
***
Special thanks to those who have helped add to and clarify this list.
More information is available at The Papal Bull. PB’s list goes into some detail on the circumstances surrounding the firings.
blogfired, blog, work, morphemetales, blogging, fired_bloggers, employment, MySpace
I’m number 8! Number 8!
The Sarcastic Journalist
shenuts.com
Ummm…no you’re not. You’re number 9.
I was fired today for blogging.
I’ll post more details at my blog (http://www.ensight.org/) later today.
I know. I saw that after the fact and went “Shit.” Never said I could count correctly!
SJ
I lost a chance at a fulltime position because I have a blog… oh well.
I followed both the Apple links and followed the links in those articles. While the one link says that Jwinokur was fired for blogging, his blog doesn’t say that and I can’t find any other info that suggests it. As for the other link, it said nothing about bloggers being fired, it said that Apple pursued people who leaked internal information - a wholly separate matter. I work at Apple and keep a (dull) blog. I work with a lot of people at Apple who blog. If you look around you can find a number of blogs from people at Apple that blog.
I am new to blogging and am just now hearing about these firings. I am confused. Are the reprimands etc. simply for blogging while on the job or because of some controversial content?
Here’s a good resource for your research:
http://rights.journalspace.com/?b=1104566400&e=1105171200
If you’re going to mention me at all in your story, I’d appreciate it if you took a couple moments to look over two posts I’ve made since “the incident”.
The first was posted just a few days after the news broke, but often seems to get overlooked and/or missed in favor of the picture itself: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2003/10/fifteen_minutes.html
The second was just posted a couple of days ago, after Ellen started her ‘Bloggers Rights’ campaign: http://www.michaelhanscom.com/eclecticism/2005/01/bloggers_rights.html
And, of course, feel free to contact me through my site (my e-mail is on my About page) if you have any further questions.
Thanks much!
Michael Hanscom
Hola Curt
Victor de nuevo (www.caramelosmog.blogspot.com) Estoy preprando un artículo sobre Queen of the Sky. De hecho, le he enviado ya unas preguntas. Si puedes ayudarme con casos similares en la blogosfera europea te lo agradecería. Saludos
P.S. Estoy asombrado por tus conocimientos de letón (Latvian)
Hugs a los bloggers americanos
Fluffy (whose blog is at http://trikuare.cx/mt/) was fired recently for undisclosed reasons, probably related to hyr work-related blog entries.
My son recently go excluded from school for 1 week for blogging.
God, blockbuster fires bloggers? Hmm, better stop whistleblowing eh?
Here’s a tip. Stop spending all your time publishing your opinions on the computer and you may be able to keep your job. This is my first ever post, and I just thought it was funny that people were upset about being fired after spending company time writing to the millions of terrible blogs. For example, there is a prominent teacher at the law school I attend who appears to be constantly posting. It would seem he should be doing more constructive things with his time, such as working with students.
Add Mark Gen at Google to this list.
Read then blog.. the Ensite example was BullSh#t. He resigned then shot his mouth off about his employer. Half these people think they are exposing some big conspiracy. Including this blog. You take most of these exmaples at face value because it adds sensationalism to your blog. Even Ensight guy is stupid enough to admin he quit.. but nobody read his blog to notice.
My company fires people who have not common sense too.
to anonymous a couple posts up there–
who says all these bloggers blogged at work? i’d like to see a starbucks employee with enough time on his hands on-shift to do that.
i know i’ve mentioned what i do, but none of my clients, and not my company’s name. i’ve never slammed my company, either.
and i have never, ever posted from work.
not every blogger does, so don’t make that assumption.
whether people should be fired for what they blog kind of depends, for me, on the content of the blog. there are certainly shades of grey, and anyone posting anything should be cognizant of that–and of their culpability when slagging their companies on the internet.
thelastditch.blogspot.com
Posted some comments about an unfriendly customer (on my own time). She called my university and my boss at the college bookstore where I work(ed). They’re currently working on getting me sacked.
I’m one right here! I just started http://www.firedforblogging.net to support the cause…
i make it a policy to never hire anyone who has a blog. bloggers are time wasters and i don’t want my team slacking on the job.
so….
are people who write journals
or keep diaries also timewasters
and what makes you the judge of that..
just curious
people should be judged based on more
than that…
also
if you are so against “bloggers”
whatcha doin’ here?
killing some time?
heh
I ALMOST got fired for my blog…luckily I happened to walk in that way with my 2 weeks notice. Somebody at work had been secretly reading my blog for MONTHS, and the one time I mentioned work, I happened to mention that I was quitting and that I was happy not to have to work with a bunch of idiots anymore. I would’ve said the idiots thing without the preemptive new job, so it’s a darn good thing I had that notice in-hand when they shoved me in a manager’s office, printed blog as evidence.
so such thing as freedom of ’speech’, eh?
Question: Is asking about a blog even a legal interview question?
Diva of Disgruntled, here.
I just want to clarify that I wasn’t fired for blogging. I started my blog over a year after I lost my job. The hand-wringing around my blog concerns how I used it to expose that my former employer was posting Systems Diagrams on the Internet (and these turned out to include patient info in the screenshots).
Add me to the list of “disciplined” and almost fired for blogging.
Count me in…very bummed out about this. It came as a total shock. I still don’t know how they found my blog.
Interesting List
I work as a part-time police chief for a small town. Some of my online diatribes on a relatively obscure online forum have come into question. I rarely talk about work online, however once in a while something slips out (i.e., real bad day sorta stuff).
I’ve been quietly placed on a paid family leave of absence for indefinitely (a nice way of saying suspended), and in two weeks when the town board convenes to show me the “evidence” they ammassed against me, I’ll be asked for my resignation.
I’m fairly sure one of my employees who doesn’t like me or my policies went on a witch hunt to dig up some dirt on me… but I’ll know more later.
It’s only a part-time job… the income loss won’t kill me - however given that I do work for the government, it may very well turn into a First Amendment and possibly some other Constitutional issues worthy of a lawsuit.
Stay tuned… I’ll be back.
Freedom of speech? ho-ho-ho
This is ridiculous, were these people just not using aliases or did they get outed?
Fired for blogging! Not on company time (though I did post on lunch hour occasionally); despite openly supporting the organizational mission; and despite nothing on my blog being anything they hadn’t heard straight from me in person. Saying my boss (whose real name was never used) is a jackass online? Poor judgement, yes. Fireable offense? The lawyers say no. http://www.livejournal.com/users/riggie
firing folks who express an opnion is among the most lame of practices. It started in Russia and China and now has arrived at the shores of USA (usta sound america) not any more. talk here get fired. what a bundh of arse holes. what happened to freedom of speach? or did GWB change another Law while we slept.
Just a comment on idiot who blooged that he did not hire blogers, cause they waste time blogging… Huh!
when did the thought police start up again?
Hi, Since February 1999, I was an employee at Johnson Controls. On December 12th, 2005 I arrived at the office for another day of work. Upon entering the building, I became aware of a problem with one of our servers(which I was responsible for). I was asked to resolve the problem, then I was to report to a conference room where I would find out I was being fired for my blog. The only information I was given as to why was in the termination letter. I had violated the company’s ethics policy. The HR manager asked if I would please remove the blog, and out of courtesy I said yes. On second thought, I wish I would have left it posted, but it is gone now. Basically, I shared some company secrets. One of those secrets was about a local manager(who is married) having a relationship with another employee. Another was about the company deciding to cut bonuses this year, while not deciding to properly communicate this with the employees until we were 11 months through the year.
My frustration with the bonus situation was that it seemed no matter who I asked about it, management was quick to point their fingers to someone else who I could ask. The situation culminated when a branch manager I asked about bonuses complained because, although he is still entitled to a bonus based on his branch’s overall success, the performance of his branch caused him not to receive his bonus. So now I’m finding out that some people, which only seemed to include management, were still to receive bonuses. So I asked my interim supervisor the same question and noted my dissatisfaction with the fact that everyone is pointing fingers. Her answer was(after my 7 faithful years with the company), “Maybe it’s time you start looking for employment elsewhere.” My answer was to vent my frustration to my blog. They returned that ball with a termination letter.
Again, I have removed the blog entry, but you can feel free to visit my site at http://richardeid.blogspot.com
You will find I am starting a new project titled, ‘7 years with Corporate America’ in which I will be sharing my experiences over the past years working for Corporate America. That’s all I have to say for now.
Actually, let me say this also. Does anyone know if Blogger can retrieve deleted posts from a blog? Actually, I deleted the entire blog I had published. If it is possible, I’d like to retreive it because I do not believe my story can be seen as legitimate without it. If anyone has the answer to this, let me know. I checked the Google search cache, and it did not include that updated post. Thanks.
try the wayback machine at http://www.archive.org/web/web.php
Hi, this is Rich, I see that you have listed me, but I was not fired from the Houston, TX branch of Johnson Controls, it was the Cleveland, OH Branch.
Hi,
My school project is to look for blogs that have a woman work from home subject. So far I have found http://www.dxinoneusa.com and others. I just thought I would post a comment on your site because I read some other comments that can help me out.
Thanks for your insights……
Steve @
ProBuilder
At my work with the county, I’m allowed to blog and do: http://www.ravenengineering.net/blog/intern/rmetcalf/
At my work in a private engineering company, I am by contract not allowed to blog about the work because every project is “confidential” in their eyes.
I found your blog and this entry by searching for a list of people that have been fired or “dooced” because of their blog. I was recently removed from my PhD program because I kept a blog that documented how I felt about graduate school and my experiences at my university.
I’m shocked at how common this phenomenon is. When I started looking for people that have been fired or diciplined for blogging I was expecting at most about 7 or 8 people.
If it’s of any interest, my blog is located here: The (Former) Life of a Microbiology Grad Student
I was fired for blogging on February 10, 2004. It’s bad when bank security brings printed pages of your site to your “meeting,” just before you are fired. Joy.
I’m better off now!
(Now, I blog from work all the time!)
Hi there, my case might make the list. I was intimidated and threatened by my employer, the London School of Economics for maintaining a blog. This is despite the official free speech policy of the university. The story is here: http://ringmar.net/forgethefootnotes/?page_id=87
I’m now in the process of writing a book on blogging and freedom of speech and censorship. This page is very helpful! If you have a story to tell, please contact me at erik@ringmar.net. The book’s blog is here: http://ringmar.net/imbloggingthis/
all the best,
I deleted the entire blog that got me fired. My new one is better. I talk about work all the time, I’m just smart about it.
Lesson learned.
Woo-hoo! My legacy of stupidness lives on! As the newspaper who painted a picture of me being an unstable whiny freak said, “[I am] a pioneer in What Not To Do.”
Scoots: And proud we are of you. Which one are you, if you’d care to say?
can you please take me off your list or change my name to just heather.. For hiring purposes I have found that I come up if you google me and I am very afraid of that.. please respond and let me know what you are going to do. You do not even know the circumstances and to just write something about someone and not checkup on it is innapropriate..
can you please take me off your list or change my name ..
Done.