Eric and Lisa make some good points in the comments to my post about Steve Olafson, the Chron reporter who was fired for running a weblog on the side. While I remain sympathetic to Olafson and think the Chron was wrong, I can see it from their perspective. And hey, I don’t know the full story. Maybe they can prove he used their resources or committed some other violation of the employee handbook. That sort of thing is usually a ticky-tack reason for canning someone, but it can be a back-breaking straw.
What really takes the cake on this, and sums up Houston’s Only Information Source (motto: As If You’ve Got A Choice) better than I ever could, is that right now, as we speak, the Chron has a reporter down in Crawford doing a “working vacation” with President Bush, and telling the world about it in (wait for it) a weblog. Go read it and see for yourself what kind of weblog the Chron thinks is worth their readers’ time.
Amazing, eh? To think they could’ve sent Cragg Hines, or John Williams, or hell, Leon Hale or Ken Hoffman. But no, they send some cub off to write a daily postcard about things like chicken fried steak and Dr Pepper. That’s our Chron.
Thanks to Erica for pointing this out in Ginger’s comments.
You know, a cynic might say the Chronicle sent a young reporter to Crawford to underscore their certainty that no one in the press pool would be allowed to get anything remotely resembling a story, and they gave her a weblog to document the futility of covering a man as stage managed as Bush.
I know it seems far-fetched, but I’m grasping at straws here.
Etc may be on to something here.
While I’m by no means to be held out an exemplar of quality blogging, I sure as hell can pick out a good blog and the Chron Blog is a bore, a crashing bore.
But let’s look for the silver lining, shall we? There’s got to be help found somewhere. Right? Being new at this game, I don’t have the Rolodex yet memorized, so I can’t tell you who it is out there who is conducting some online Adult Ed Blogging 101 course. But as I’m learning time and time again…if I can so much as imagine it, it’s an online reality.
The point here being…the Chron needs to get their staff matriculated. But fast…