Like this:

Tattle-Tale Newspaper Costs Vulgar Commenter His Job – Kurt Greenbaum – Gawker

A St. Louis schools employee made a juvenile, vulgar joke in the comments section of the St. Louis Post-Dispatch website, anonymously. Soon, he was out of a job because an offended newspaper editor hunted him down and called his bosses.

Way to win reader trust, Post-Dispatch!

And just to complete this discussion, here is the original column and here is the guy’s justification and the ensuing response.

Look, we can go round and round about the fact that this guy said something that as a public employee he should not have said using a public computer, let alone a school computer (a fact which he tries to hang onto like the edge of a cliff). But the fact is he tracked down a person for what was at best an immature comment on a stupid question of the day.

I might cut Mr. Greenbaum some slack if what the man had said was illegal (posting up child porn, for instance). And I will cut him some slack in the fact that the guy tried to post it twice (that at least, could have warranted an e-mail along the lines of “we’re banning your account and we know that you posted this from the school’s ISP”. But what this was was a writer who had way, way too much time on his hands and sending a chilling statement to its readers: if we don’t like what you say we’ll get your bosses to fire you or put you in a position where you have to resign. Maybe that’s not the message that they thought they would send, but it’s the message that they did send nonetheless.

BTW, if anybody wants to e-mail Mr. Greenbaum’s boss and tell him how you feel, send an e-mail to either SiteEditor@stltoday.com or generalmanager@stltoday.com. And feel free to comment on this entry. I definitely won’t be writing any of your bosses. Promise.

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