Yesterday over at TechCrunch a post was made by a guest blogger Dan Ackerman Greenberg that was, to say the least, controversial. Mr. Greenberg’s “business” is to spread viral content by any means necessary, even if some of his motives are questionably ethical at best.
The debate on this site isn’t so much the content of the actual post as to how it was handled by the site’s staff. It seems that Michael Arrington, the owner of the site, was not aware of this post before it was published and he decided to express his displeasure over it publicly. His staff later replied saying this post had gone through the normal editorial process and they stood by their decision to publish it.
I can not stress how inappropriate this was on a blog of any size, let alone one of the top 10 blogs in the world. If blogs are to ever be taken seriously, we have to handle ourselves in a professional manner at all times, and this was far from that. The biggest moral of this story has to be that you are always responsible at the end of the day for what appears on any blog you put your name on. Even if you don’t write it, you should at least check in as often as possible and see what’s being said. And if you do have a problem, handle it privately, not out in the open for everyone to see.
