- First rule of journalism: Don’t make yourself part of the story. Guess which rule the St. Louis Post-Dispatch’s social media editor broke? As the so-called internet hate machine closes in on a guy who cost another guy his job for a pretty petty reason, we think there are a few things to learn from the whole ordeal.
- one Don’t make yourself part of the story. The second Greenbaum decided to look up a reader’s IP address and took matters into his own hands, the story stopped being about the comment and started being about the admitted narc. Bad move, buddy.
- two Don’t violate your readers’ trust. People go to your site with the belief that they won’t get screwed over. In fact, the St. Louis Post Dispatch’s own privacy policy promises this. When you decide to be the morality police, you violate a reader’s trust.
- three Expect a swift, painful response. Not long after our boy Kurt did this, he felt retribution from all corners of the interweb, including Reddit and Digg. And honestly, he should lose his job. He turned a minor issue into a policy-breaking debacle. source
Posted by Ernie Smith •
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