Why I’ll never work for the Times

Steve Outing quotes N.Y. Times editor Apcar on employee blogs.

That’s one reason that The New York Times tightly controls personal blogs by its journalists. Of the companies I surveyed for this report, the Times was the most restrictive, by far. New York Times Digital Editor-in-Chief Len Apcar puts it bluntly: “I don’t like the concept of the personal blog in terms of The New York Times.”



Blogs are a fine medium, says Apcar, and he’s been introducing staff-written blogs to NYTimes.com in recent months — and hints that more experiments are to come. But in terms of a staff member writing a personal blog: forget it, for the most part.

Long ago I decided I’d avoid saying anything bad about my employer on my blog. It struck me as a workable compromise that would keep a roof over my head.

Ever since then, though, it has grated on me to think: Wait a minute, aren’t freedom of speech and freedom of the press basic human rights?

And don’t we work ourselves into fits of high dudgeon when countries deny these kinds of basic rights to their citizens?

And aren’t newspapers the most ardent defenders of these rights — not just for themselves but for the citizens they serve?

And what does it look like when these champions of the press are saying to us: You can write anything you want so long as you OK it with us first? Isn’t that a kind of prior restraint forbidden to governments?

And why should employers who compete in markets for their products be shielded from the Marketplace of Ideas?

And why must we trade our fundamental human rights for the basic requirement of survival in a market economy — that is, for a job?

I don’t know, I’m just asking.