Tom Mangan reports on his Weblog that three Tampa Tribune Webloggers have ceased blogging — one after pressure from his bosses, and the other two on their own initiative afterward.
Dave Simanoff writes on his Web site, “The people who sign my paychecks have informed me that they’re not pleased with the Daily Dave. One of the complaints is that some of my posts on the Daily Dave compromise my objectivity and the newspaper’s credibility. Since it’s never been my objective to discredit myself or my employer, and because I don’t know if any of my previous posts might be used to penalize me, I have decided to take down the Daily Dave, in its present form, in its entirety… It would be a stretch to call this censorship, but it amounts to my voice being silenced nonetheless. If you’d like to blame someone for killing off the Daily Dave, you can blame me: I have made a conscious decision to take down the site because I’m not willing to sacrifice my career for my blog….I will take down all of the Daily Dave content by the end of the weekend. Please enjoy one last look around before the wrecking ball comes through.”
Jeff of SideSalad.net writes on Tom Mangan’s blog, “No one at the Trib asked me to take mine down. There was not even the slightest hint of pressure about it. It was my decision alone, one made for a variety of reasons.”
And Clay of CopyMassage.blogspot.com writes, “Nothing’s up on my end, really. Saw the other sites were down and figured I would take my stuff offline until I heard something more certain. ”
Related headline from CyberJournalist.net:
Dueling columns on journalists’ right to blog
