{"id":563,"date":"2004-02-18T06:56:39","date_gmt":"2004-02-18T06:56:39","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/?p=563"},"modified":"2004-02-18T06:56:39","modified_gmt":"2004-02-18T06:56:39","slug":"why-ill-never-work-for-the-times","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2004\/02\/why-ill-never-work-for-the-times\/","title":{"rendered":"Why I&#8217;ll never work for the Times"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Outing <a href=\"http:\/\/www.editorandpublisher.com\/eandp\/columns\/stopthepresses_display.jsp?vnu_content_id=2092374\">quotes N.Y. Times editor Apcar<\/a> on employee blogs.<\/p>\n<ul>That&#8217;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: &#8220;I don&#8217;t like the concept of the personal blog in terms of The New York Times.&#8221;<br \/>\n<BR><BR><br \/>\nBlogs are a fine medium, says Apcar, and he&#8217;s been introducing staff-written blogs to NYTimes.com in recent months &#8212; 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.<\/ul>\n<p>Long ago I decided I&#8217;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.<\/p>\n<p>Ever since then, though, it has grated on me to think: Wait a minute, aren&#8217;t freedom of speech and freedom of the press <i>basic human rights<\/i>?<\/p>\n<p>And don&#8217;t we work ourselves into fits of  high dudgeon when countries deny these kinds of basic rights to their citizens?<br \/>\n<P>And aren&#8217;t newspapers the most ardent defenders of these rights &#8212; not just for themselves but for the citizens they serve?<\/p>\n<p>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&#8217;t that a kind of prior restraint forbidden to governments?<br \/>\n<P>And why should employers who compete in markets for their products be shielded from the Marketplace of Ideas?<\/p>\n<p>And why must we trade our fundamental human rights for the basic requirement of survival in a market economy &#8212; that is, for a job?<\/p>\n<p>I don&#8217;t know, I&#8217;m just asking.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Steve Outing quotes N.Y. Times editor Apcar on employee blogs. That&#8217;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&hellip;<\/p>\n<p class=\"more-link-p\"><a class=\"more-link\" href=\"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/2004\/02\/why-ill-never-work-for-the-times\/\">Read more &rarr;<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[6],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=563"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/563\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=563"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=563"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/tommangan.net\/printsthechaff\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=563"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}