Be Careful What You Tell a Blogger
I learned this from experience. Whenever I talk to journalist friends about current events and important issues, I always make it a point to explicitly clarify whether something I’m saying is supposed to be off the record. Otherwise, I know that whatever I say can and probably will be quoted and published if the information is juicy enough.
It’s the same with bloggers. Last night, I had a chat with a colleague in the blog network industry, and he told me how some friends have criticized him for blogging about juicy insider information that they had shared with him. His response: they should be cautious about sharing such information with a blogger!
True enough, bloggers today are more potent than the gossip columns of old. Gossip is best spread by word of mouth. But when it becomes word-of-blog, it gets a larger audience. And it gets a worldwide audience.
And we’ve read about it all too often: trade secrets, politicians’ nasty antics, unfair business practices—all published on blogs. And it’s great that the public gets to learn about the bad stuff that goes about. But imagine you’re in the position of the whistleblower, so to speak. More likely than not, whatever gets published online could be attributed to people who have insider information. And especially if you’re the only person who is likely to have known and shared that juicy piece of information—it’s easy to pinpoint it’s you! There could be repercussions. You could get fired from your job. You could get sued. Or worse.
So be careful. One of the good ideas I’ve picked up from my blogger friends over the years is to add a line in my email signature: a check-box, whether that particular email is:
- Bloggable
- Not bloggable
- Ask first.
This defaults to “ask first,” because I don’t often send emails with secrets. But when I send something that’s supposed to be private, I tick “not bloggable.” When I send something I would like people to blog about, I tick “bloggable” (sometimes works as a subtle hint!).
Be careful what you tell a blogger. That person could just blog about it!
What do you think?