They have have issued new rules that seriously restrict the free speech rights of any employee Illini Media

Oh please. When I was there, staffers also weren’t allowed to make personal long-distance phone calls. Was that restricting their free speech rights too?

That’s why so many media organizations are putting blogs on their Websites. Some are even hiring outside bloggers. Eric Zorn, the Chicago Tribune’s fine columnist often discusses why stories appear and don’t appear.

Of course it makes sense that newspapers can (and should) leverage the Internet and blogging as tools for providing more transparency to readers. But do you honestly think Eric Zorn can blog about anything he happens to see or hear in the newsroom? Do you think newspapers who hire outside bloggers just say, “hey, post whatever you want,” and then hope for the best? Of course not. They operate under guidelines set by the people signing their paycheck.
Are staffers at The Daily Illini still going to blog about their work, possibly anonymously? Of course! Staffers are also still going to make those personal long-distance phone calls, are still going to use the company car to run errands, and are still going to use company computers to do their homework. But the IMC would be irresponsible as a business not to have formal policies in place to provide them with some tools for recourse when someone on the payroll acts against the interests of the company — that’s theirright. If the IMC wasn’t run responsibly as the business that it is, it wouldn’t have the kind of resources it makes available to students. (I’m sure you’re aware that IMC is self-funding, and that it’s not run or paid for by the University.)
Newspapers absolutely have an obligation to share with their readers how the sausage is made. But they should so in a formal, identifiable way that provides readers with clear avenues of response, and staff members with a reasonable understanding of what parts of their working day are “bloggable.”
Perhaps the new policy is overreaching. But the IMC I know has always eventually evolved in ways that best serve all the students it employs. As more and more staffers come into the newsroom with an established presence in the blogosphere, they’ll have to figure out how to accommodate that in a way that makes sense not just for the individual blogger, but for the rest of the staff, the rest of the company, and the readers and community they all serve. If you’d like to share your opinion on how they should do that, I recommend writing a letter to the editor.
Andrew Savikas
Daily Illini Editor in Chief, 2000-2001