gor[b] Paul Gorbould: Words and Pictures

Whose blog is it anyway?

I don’t mind CBC having a blogging policy.

I asked for one, more than a year ago, and got no answer. So did others.

I don’t mind following blogging guidelines. After getting no answer from CBC, I helped write my own.

I don’t even object to most of the line items in the “Personal Blogging - Guidelines for CBC/Radio-Canada Employees” document that was leaked out yesterday. A lot of them are common sense.

But I really, really resent the way this document came about. To wit: it was crafted behind closed doors, in secret, without any consultation with the people who know and care most about it, without any heed to industry best practices, without any transparency or public input.

That’s a pre-lockout mindset, and it coughed up a Web 1.0 policy that makes everyone look foolish. And that, in my opinion, is more damaging than anything any CBC blogger has ever said or done.

The document

The CBC’s blogging guidelines have not been officially distributed, although I have a copy of it. I suspect it wasn’t quite ready for primetime, and a few people have probably had their long weekends ruined as a result of the leak. Especially after it got BoingBoinged.

What’s the document say? After a preamble about the importance of the internet and the rise of blogging, the document states that blogging (and, of note, other self-publishing including podcasting) must be done according to the new guidelines, “if the content clearly associates them with CBC/Radio-Canada.”

Nobody understands what that means. The document later states that:

Blogs or websites which do not identify the bloggers as a CBC/Radio-Canada employee, do not discuss CBC/Radio-Canada and are purely about personal matters would normally fall outside these guidelines.

The ambiguity over what counts as “associating” yourself with CBC, and what counts as “discussing” CBC is worrying, and perhaps purposeful. (If I list myself as “a journalist who works for a Canadian national public broadcaster”, is that identification? Couldn’t you just look me up? What if it’s on my CV? What if I accidentally mention that I was in an elevator with Luba Goy? Can I talk about the bathroom stalls any more? Can I review a Dr. Who episode?)

If you determine you might be associated with CBC or might talk about your employer, there are a number of bullet points to follow. And I have to say most of them are common sense, and simply reiterate the rules CBC journalists already have to follow. Conduct yourself in accordance with your contract, HR policies, and the Journalistic Standards and Practices. Don’t waste CBC time or channels. CBC work belongs to CBC. And so on.

There’s a little confusion over the edict to avoid partisan politics and “controversy”, but that’s all in the JS&P already – a worthy, sensible document, though it could use a little internet-age revision.

The part that’s going to raise hell is the twice-repeated claim that “to start and maintain a blog of this kind, you need your supervisor's approval.”

I don’t know if that’s legal, enforceable, constitutional or smart. Part of me wants to call a lawyer, call the union, call the Electronic Frontier Foundation to find out. I did consult a professional ethicist who drafts policies like these for a living, and his first impression was not positive. (He promises to weigh in shortly weighs in here with some interesting points.)

But my point is that all these calls should have already been made – by CBC, not by me.

A year late

See, the explosion of CBC employee blogging happened during the 2005 lockout, a time we’d all rather put behind us. Simply put, on the street level PR front, CBC management got it’s ass handed to it on a platter.

And to their credit they made some moves to get with the program: They launched an official blog and hired the most effective locked-out blogger to run it. They cleared the path for official CBC blogs and made an extraordinary push into podcasting. They sent out RFPs for Web 2.0 tools for CBC.ca, explored TV shows with civic input. And they talked a lot about nimbleness, transparency and collaboration. You can argue about the results, but the ship seemed to be headed in the right direction.

I started blogging a few months later, and tried to find out what rules I needed to follow. I asked a manager, a union rep and other bloggers, and nobody knew. Not only was there no official policy, but it appeared (rightly) that none would be coming for a long time.

So a bunch of us got together to write our own guidelines. We called it the CBC Blogging Manifesto (mostly in jest) but really it was just a statement of principles, designed to clarify what we thought was important. It started with:

Use common sense and don't do anything stupid. Blog to make the CBC better, not to kill it. There are plenty of others who want to do that for us.

I guess the manifesto failed, though. Because what we really wanted was for CBC policy makers to read it and think of it as starting point when they eventually crafted an official policy. We hoped it would open the door to a conversation with people who care deeply about both blogging and the corporation. We hoped that maybe someday, someone might want to talk.

But they didn’t.

Instead, exactly one year later, the management version leaked out, without any conversation at all. It came from somewhere within the Editor in Chief’s office (though I don’t know if it came from the acting or outgoing EIC) and it was distributed somehow (but not to bloggers) by my boss’s boss, then leaked, then clarified as “guidelines” [update: then clarified as "draft guidelines".] I suppose if I ever receive it through official channels, I’ll have to toe the line, if anyone knows where it is.

I don’t have a problem with that. It’s management’s right - they make the rules, and I’ll do what I’m told. I always do. But MAN! Talk about a wasted opportunity for some good PR, some good advice, and some goodwill.

Outside the box

Here’s what progressive companies do, the ones that understand technology, value employees and care about communication.

They take risks, like Sun Microsystems did.

Many of us at Sun are doing work that could change the world. We need to do a better job of telling the world. As of now, you are encouraged to tell the world about your work, without asking permission first …. By speaking directly to the world, without benefit of management approval, we are accepting higher risks in the interest of higher rewards….The real goal isn't to get everyone at Sun blogging, it's to become part of the industry conversation.

Being a part of the industry conversation seems like something CBC desperately wants.

Same thing happened at IBM more than two years ago:

IBM today is publishing an announcement on its Intranet site encouraging all 320,000+ employees world wide to consider engaging actively in the practice of "blogging". This move follows several years of persistent grassroots efforts by an informal community of IBM bloggers. Technical leaders like Sam Ruby, Grady Booch, Robert Sutor and business leaders like Ed Brill and Catherine Helzerman have played a very significant role in this effort by providing excellent models for other IBMers to follow. Behind the scenes, a small handful of technical innovators developed and deployed an internal blogging service that has grown in a period of just 18 months to just shy of 9,000 registered users spanning 65 countries….

My godfathers, is the nation’s broadcaster really less progressive with communications than Big Blue?

It has always shocked the hell out of me that in a corporation of 10,000 people, all focused on communications, there are less than two dozen who run blogs under their own names. Maybe now I know why. Maybe my wife was right, and I should have never stuck out my neck. I thought I had proved her wrong when CBC Communications said they liked my work enough to let me fill in on the official CBC blog. Maybe not.

Maybe we should all blog anonymously, neatly sidestepping this policy. Then we can say whatever we want, like we did during the lockout. Lord knows that will reflect more positively on the corporation, right? We all saw what that world was like. Drive everyone underground and create a dozen little CBC Drones and Tea Makers.

Do we even need a policy? Has someone blogged the secret sauce recipe, and needs to be Dooced?

Or could we have just trusted people to use their brains and follow existing policies? Just days before his death, the late David Bazay, then CBC Ombudsman, wrote this on the subject. (He was responding to an anonymous blogger.)

If public broadcasters are to become bloggers I would hope that they would exercise their freedom of speech exactly the way they are compelled to exercise it within the CBC: with accuracy, fairness and integrity, with the responsible speech of CBC's Journalistic Standards and Practices that has helped make this place one of the great places in the world where the citizen can be well informed.

That just about makes me want to cry. Whatever happened to those guys who trusted their employees and thought they might – just might – be able to inform people and reflect well on the corporation?

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Update: According to CBC acting Editor in Chief Esther Enkin, the document circulated was “an early draft of proposed policies" which was "inadvertently passed on". No specific corporate policies relating directly to blogging are in effect, though other policies still apply. Blogging rules may be coming in the future, and they may take some of this reaction into account.