Being "followed" by the local press

Dear Amanda,

Thanks for "following" me on Twitter. I hope my posts and links to other sources of information and ideas will be useful to you in your work as the Free Press education reporter.

As a reporter, however, please keep in mind that my Blue Skunk blog postings, my tweets, and the articles I write for print publications are only my perosnal views and are not those of the Mankato Area Public Schools. Any criticism or comment I make about education is generic, not specific to our schools, staff, or community.

If what I write raises any questions or concerns, please don't hesitate to call me.

Thanks and all the best,

Doug

This past weekend I received an email letting me know that Amanda Dyslin is following me on Twitter. It gave me pause since Amanda is the education reporter for the local newspaper.

Even though I've been writing for public consumption, doing public speaking, and conducting workshops nationally and internationally for 20 years, I've purposely kept as low a profile locally as possible. Yes, part of it is Minnesota modesty, but even more, I don't really want the constraints imposed when knowing that your community may be reading your often imperfect, exploratory, political, and personal thoughts.

But I've also known for a long time that one never knows who is reading and I've tried to live by some common sense blogging rules that I first listed in 2007: 

When I first started teaching back in the mid-70s, the district I worked for had two rules. The first was that you had to live in the district; the second was that you were to set a "moral" example. And the good folks in central Iowa had a pretty rigid definition of "moral." Not being able to drink a beer on my own front porch rankled me then and it rankles me now to think that my free speech rights might be abrogated if I were banned from blogging.

But then I remind myself that rights are always accompanied by responsibilities.

Here are some things I try to keep in mind when I write for the Blue Skunk. I honestly don't want Johnson vs. Board of Education being studied in school law classes someday.

• Write assuming your boss is reading. That's good (and common) advice as far as it goes. But I know my wife, my mother, and my daughter all read The Blue Skunk now and then. (My wife is lobbying me to change how I reference her from the LWW - Luckiest Woman in the Word - to the BBWWLMEWIJ - the Beautiful, Brilliant Woman Who Loves Me Even When I am a Jerk). I assume my co-workers read the blog, as might anyone for whom I might work someday, either as a regular employee or a contractor. Somehow this doesn't really narrow the scope of what I want to write about, but it does force me to ask questions about language, taste, and approach. Every time I've wondered if I should put something of questionable taste in the blog and did, it's usually come back to bite me. A person can tell. Mostly.
• Gripe globally; praise locally. I don't think anyone really fusses if you express your opinions about global warming, the economy, or NCLB. But you will never catch me dissing a person who lives close enough that he could easily come by and TP my house. Nor would I say bad things about a person who I might then have to avoid at a conference. Even going negative, I try to make it about ideas, not people. I have to admit I am really lucky to be working in a school with people I genuinely think are pretty darned good and with whom I am proud to be associated. I don't agree with every decision made, but I know that the decision was made thoughtfully.
• Write for edited publications. I've been writing professionally for over 20 years and certainly on a continuous basis since I've been working for the Mankato Schools. A good deal of what I write is opinion and I've even written a several editorials for state and local newspapers. My boss in the past has shared things I've written with the school board as a point of pride, I hope. Were the district now to react negatively to my blog, I believe it would have a difficult case showing that my writing impedes my employer's effectiveness or efficiency or otherwise disrupts the workplace, since it has not done so in the past. It would be a condemnation of a technology, not of a practice.
• Write out of goodness. I have a difficult time believing that anything you write because you want to improve education, improve kids lives, or improve society will be counted against you. If you write out of negativity - to vent, to whine, to ridicule - yeah, you'll probably have problems. But I am guessing you were probably having problems at work before you started blogging if that is your blog content. In a workplace where dismissing someone for mediocre job performance or poor interpersonal skills is nearly impossible, supervisors are often looking for any legal means of firing people. If you are doing a good job at work, blog. If you aren't, don't blog.

It is our professional duty to share what works for us and ask for help when we are stymied. Blogs allow us to do both and it would be a crying damn shame if the advice of an overly cautious lawyer stopped this flow of information.

These guidlines still work for me - especially the last one - writing out of goodness.

Welcome to the Twitter feed, Amanda.

Comments

[Kenn Gorman]

Well said - please continue writing!