Fired for blogging in South Africa

Well, it has taken long enough for the trend to catch on here too (although I am not sure this is really a first, just the most publicised). Llewellyn Kriel, a journalist who (previously) worked for the Sowetan (a Johncom/Avusa paper) has been fired because of a blog post he published on Thought Leader about how the Sowetan was no longer hiring staff when the existing staff are overwhelmed by their workload. The post highlights apparent mismanagement at the paper and deteriorating quality levels, culminating in a crisis for a paper he holds in high regard himself. He also published an apology for some of the comments he made a couple days later.

That didn’t go down well at all with management and Llewellyn was fired yesterday:

I was found guilty of gross misconduct for bringing the Sowetan’s name into disrepute by criticising it in a blog and for making public confidential company information. That’s how the Sowetan sees it.

Which is a pity because it reinforces the view that it is a sub-standard newspaper. And it certainly is not. Today’s (Friday’s) edition is a massive 72 pages and you don’t get that size of tabloid if you’re a crappy paper. I was very proud to work at the Sowetan and prouder to have called some of the fine people there my colleagues.

This is hardly something new and this particular instance is pretty similar to when former Google employee, Mark Jen, was fired from Google after grousing about his pay a couple years ago. There is arguably a difference between Llewellyn’s and Mark’s cases because Llewellyn didn’t seem to be revealing any confidential information per se but rather highlighting a growing tragedy at what I understand is one of South Africa’s better papers.

The whole thing is taking shape as a freedom of expression issue although, as Arthur Goldstuck pointed out, Sowetan fired Llewellyn for disclosing confidential information and not for exercising his right to freedom of expression. It is difficult to really test this from the outside but on a reading Llelwellyn’s initial post, I don’t really see where the confidential information is. Surely blogging about a growing internal crisis can hardly constitute confidential information, as embarrassing as it is to the paper’s management. Confidential information is usually the kind of top secret stuff you wouldn’t want your competitors to see for fear of them taking advantage of that to undermine your business. This includes things like pricing structures, customer lists, contract renewal dates and the secret recipe for Coke (the liquid kind).

Vincent makes a good point in his post on the story (actually, he makes a few good points). The one point is pretty ironic because a sister paper, The Times, has made a pretty big show of promoting blogging (I am a contributing blogger to The Times) and yet when someone blogs about the internal challenges facing one of the papers in the group on an outside platform (the competitor’s no less - I wonder if the result would have been different if Llewellyn had published the post on a blog of his own?) they are fired on the basis of disclosure of confidential information. Another irony is that the Sunday Times made a huge deal out of its expose of the health minister a short while ago and how the paper was exercising its right to freedom of expression for the public benefit. How is this fundamentally different? We could debate whether talking about internal mismanagement at a large paper is a matter for the public interest but this is still going too far, surely?

Vincent argues that this is a complex issue and he may be right. I am tempted to launch into a new tirade about blogging and freedom of expression but I have done that a number of times already. At the moment this is more like a typical case of an employer who is missing an opportunity to take advantage of an employee’s passion for the paper. The Sowetan could have used this as another opportunity to really listen to its employees and make important changes to how the paper is run, for the benefit of the paper itself and its readers. It apparently had a number of opportunities already which it ignored. Unfortunately people in management often have their own agendas and pride which tends to get in the way of doing the right thing. It takes a real leader to acknowledge when his/her way is not the best way and to really listen to what the minions think.

Update:
There are a couple more perspectives on this story (and links to perspectives) on the following blogs:

It seems that those in the press who have commented on this story tend to be a lot more cagey about their thoughts on this issue. I am not sure if this is due to their concern that they could find themselves in a similar position (on both sides of the fence) or not. Then again, I may be particularly insensitive to these complexities they speak of. For me the question to ask is whether there really was confidential information disclosed in Llewellyn’s post.

Was this leaked "confidential information" the revelation of an email that was distributed halting new hires? Was it the statements that people working at the paper had taken pay cuts between 20% and 50% when they became full time staff? Or perhaps the allegations that the paper is so badly managed and staff so demoralised that they are virtually queuing to walk out the door?

Does extreme embarrassment constitute a basis for confidentiality? Maybe it is the criticism of the education minister and her department and the concern that people leaving school simply are not equipped to enter the workforce and string a sentence together? This would certainly be worth talking about if it turned out to be true, especially if there was some political influence coming through there.

Perhaps the focus should be on how the Sowetan chose to fire its employee rather than taking his post as a warning sign to take a good hard look at conditions at the paper and to do something about it.

However you look at it, this is not going to be the last case of its kind. We are going to see more cases of employees fired for blogging. What will be interesting to watch will be the trends we see developing. They will tell us whether this social media mindset some of us have been talking about has taken root or not.

Tags: llewellyn kriel, kriel, llewellyn, sowetan, fired for blogging, fired, blogging, criticism, avusa, johncom, politics, freedom of expression, confidential information, missed opportunities