How's Your News?

TechCrunch posts details of fired intern's mistake, and that's a mistake.

An intern at TechCrunch was fired for accepting a Macbook Air as compensation in exchange for a blog post. Michael Arrington, who runs the leading tech blog, made the decision to publicly post about this matter, in detail, "protecting" the name of the person in question, who might I add is underage. He deleted all of this person's posts on the site as well. You can read the article in question here.

This was a ridiculous thing to do on Arrington's part. Not only did this make it fairly easy based on comparing cached versions of the site to find out who it is, Arrington later decided to reveal the intern's identity once he came forward - after the damning article was posted.

I don't think this post should have ever been written. At private companies when someone loses their job, a general email is usually circulated stating the person is no longer with the company. In almost all cases the reason is not revealed, nor are the facts of whether the individual left of their own accord or were fired.

This posting does just the opposite, revealing everything that lead up to the individual's dismissal, while not implicitly exposing who it is. Now that he's been revealed, one has to wonder if the intern would have ever spoken about this publicly had it not been for the fact that:

a) Readers would not have to dig very deep to figure out whose posts are no longer there, combined with

b) Why exactly he was terminated has been made public

With both pieces of information tied to each other in a public forum, I have a feeling this intern (whose name I choose not to further promote here) only chose to come forward due to the inevitability of readers finding out not only that it was he who was let go, but also what he did.

In my opinion the right course of action would have been to bid him adieu internally, delete his posts and simply move on. Some people might have questioned why all his articles were now missing , but in that situation I believe it's the responsibility of Arrington to not only protect someone who did something wrong, but to protect the image of someone who is underage.

While the situation is serious from an internal standpoint, and while the intern made a mistake that cost him his job, the biggest mistake here comes on the part of Arrington: on one hand you have him chastising the poor judgement made by one of his interns, but then acquiescing to that intern's judgement call to reveal his identity.

If it was a poor judgement call for Daniel to take the Macbook to begin with, why would you encourage the decision he made to come forward? Then again, as stated earlier, the posting of this article to begin with made it pretty difficult for him not to defend himself.

This intern now has to go out into the world with a very public black mark on his record, due to the negative public perception he's been handed, and he's not even 18 yet. Good luck, kid.

Bob Kinnear Needs to Wake Up

A recent photo posted to Twitter showing a Toronto Transit Commission employee sleeping on the job has made its way to mainstream news, inciting Amalgamated Transit Union leader Bob Kinnear to respond publicly:

"There have been many media enquires about a picture taken at 10:00 p.m. on January 9 of a TTC Collector described as "sleeping" in the booth.

The TTC is conducting an enquiry on this and until this is completed the union will have no comment on the matter except this:

Whatever the outcome of the enquiry, it is very discouraging that the picture taker and, apparently, other customers, made no attempt to determine if there was anything wrong with this TTC employee. A simple knock on the glass might have determined if the Collector was, in fact, asleep, or whether he was unconscious as a result of some medical problem. The reports that passengers were laughing at him as they passed by the booth makes this even more disturbing.

The union will comment further at an appropriate time."

Is he kidding? Nope! Kinnear appears to actually be blaming the public for not checking on the Collector - ie. avoiding taking a photo of him and posting it online and causing embarrassment for the TTC. That obviously didn't happen, and the ATU leader's outcry is about as insane as it gets - especially considering there's been no news of any medical condition or emergency situation suffered by the slumbering ticket collector, shown in the most relaxed position I've ever seen someone in an office chair. Maybe he was having a heart attack and instead of collapsing or calling for help, decided to clasp his hands, push his chair back, and recline peacefully.

Kinnear's response is something I would expect to read on The Onion - completely unbelievable, presumed tongue-in-cheek and lacking any connection to reality. He wraps quotation marks around "sleeping" even a full two weeks after the fact, as if it's somehow still up in the air whether the employee was actually taking a nap.

Dear Mr. Kinnear: It's not such a big deal that one of your employees was caught grabbing a little shut-eye, but you're making this bigger than it needs to be by pointing the accusing finger your customers.

P.S. - He was asleep, dude.

Perhaps Kinnear unconsciously made the choice to take a stance that was so over-the-top, he wanted to push the envelope of absurdity to find out what he could say without any real repercussions.

Regardless of the actions - or lack thereof - that result after Kinnear's stated ignorance of the pink elephant in the booth, this seems to show the lengths to which he will protect his employees even while the evidence stares him in the face, albeit mouth-ajar . And if disciplinary action is handed down to the Collector after all, it would be a surprise to me after Kinnear's melodramatic defensive stance.

I think Bob Kinnear is the one who needs to wake up.