'Stakeholders' Must Have Slipped His Mind

The Washington Post's new policy of discouraging staff from blogging on social networks is good journalistic and business sense.

The conduct of individual employees can positively and negatively affect the public's perception of a company. This is just as true of the Post as it is of Enron, Countrywide, or the Philadelphia Phillies.

Informal "tweets," even when intended only for close friends, can, and as the case of editor Raju Narisetti shows, do leak. Politically tinged messages, such as Mr. Narisetti's tweet about health care reform, confirm perceptions of an impartial press and open the paper to easy attacks on its objectivity.

The inherent informality of "micro-blogging" often lends itself to poor taste. Mr. Narisetti's public comment on Senator Robert Byrd's physical and mental fitness was equally out-of-line, if not as professionally risky, as his later grousing about his co-workers.

For a more politically vocal publication, such as the Boston Phoenix or the Weekly Standard, such a tight-lipped policy is perhaps less necessary. But for the Post, a premier national newspaper with no stated political orientation, the new policy is a prudent move.


Not "Knews;" or, Paging H. L. Mencken

The Post's policy is also a breath of fresh air for a media enamored with social networking sites. Building a newscast around Twitter, Facebook and MySpace, (I'm looking at you, CNN's Rick Sanchez), is a travesty of journalism and cable television.

Why should a paying cable subcriber be subjected to the uninformed, unsupported, uninsightful, unsigned commentary of the uneducated, apparently underemployed Internet at-large? Why must it be read aloud on national television, when the same disjointed rants and raves can easily be found at their source, the social networking sites themselves? Do they really have any news value? Did I mention that I'm paying for this stuff?

How about telling me something I don't know. Computer time is over, let's go out and do some real reporting.