Blog o' Blogs

I was hired at Fairplex in the summer of 2008 with no specific job description other than that I would help out in the horse racing department, specifically with media. I first worked doing basic office duties, then wrote copy for press releases and print advertisements. My principle responsibility became the “Thoroughblogger” blog on Fairplex Park’s Web site. The original writer became too busy to keep up with it, so I took over. I could write, take photos and make videos.

I tried to continue what they had started. The blog discussed Fairplex Park and general topics in horse racing. It included their opinion, but never revealed their identity as the author. I eventually added my name on the posts I authored, at the suggestion of a journalist that was working in the press box with me during their race meet that September. I thought providing my name would give the blog more credibility because readers would know who was “speaking.”

Everything was going well. After their September race meet I continued to work on the blog as time allowed, considering I went back to college full-time.

My supervisor left around Thanksgiving that year, after the race meet, to take another job. Fairplex didn’t search for someone to replace them, so Fairplex tapped an employee from one of their other divisions to fill the void.

I always tried to find something different, to create unique content for the blog that one couldn’t find anywhere else. That would bring readers to the blog and Web site. In a photojournalism class at my college we were required to do a photo essay. I immediately wanted to do one related to horse racing, and decided to do one on a horse’s preparations in the week before a race. This photo essay would also provide fresh, original content to post on the blog.

Enter Blue Exit. I was kindly granted permission to take photos of him at critical junctions in the week before he ran in the $1 million Santa Anita Handicap run at Santa Anita Park, not far from Fairplex. You can see all of the photos here. In order to keep the content relevant, I posted each day’s photos/video the same day I took them so readers could follow along in near-real time. The story had begun and I was going to follow through to the end. I knew I already had people hooked because of feedback on fan forums throughout the Internet, where I had posted links to promote the blog.

In a perfect world the grand finale would be an amazing win in the race! That was not to be. Things went horribly wrong, ending with Blue Exit suffering a fatal injury in the race. I think I had a better chance of getting struck by lightning than having that happen to a horse I knew and liked, a horse I was following for a photo essay, and a horse I was following on a corporate blog.

The last thing I wanted to do was write about that emotionally scarring day, but I thought I had the responsibility to the readers to finish the story I had started. I was not going to ignore the ending and act like it never happened, and I certainly wasn’t going to delete the posts I had already made on the subject. So I wrote. To review the post in its entirety, see my re-post HERE. I didn’t let it all hang out. I left out a lot of details, both related to the horse and myself, but I did include some personal feelings, something that my readings have indicated is a good thing for corporate blogs. Now, I don’t know if this applies to sad emotions, but I couldn’t control the ending to the story. It was sad and there’s no way around it.

I got several consolatory comments from concerned readers. That’s several more comments than other posts had been averaging. Readers obviously cared.

Fast forward two weeks later and an employee in the horse racing department notified me that my new supervisor, who hadn’t even talked to me since they took over the prior year, wanted to review my posts before they went on the blog. Phone conversations that I had with them indicated they hadn’t even been reading the Web site, let alone the blog, until after the Blue Exit incident. The employee who told me about the reviewing process, and my new supervisor, suggested some topics for the blog to take my mind off of things, but they were things I felt were a clear conflict of interest - things they had a personal interest in.

I don’t have a problem with the posts being reviewed. I’d rather be corrected early than scolded later for not knowing what was OK and what wasn’t (there were no blog policies or guidelines at Fairplex). I do, however, have a problem with the person reviewing them not letting me post anything that isn’t directly related to them. That is what happened once I agreed to the reviewing process. That is not promoting Fairplex nor is it fostering interesting content to attract readers.

At this point supervisor-employee relations are now aggravated. But wait, there’s more! One day I noticed the final Blue Exit post was gone. Poof! I was annoyed that they hadn’t notified me they were doing this and just hoped I’d never notice. If they had asked me or told me that they wanted to take it down, I would not have been that angry. When I asked my supervisor why it had been taken down, they replied in an e-mail saying it was “a little dark for our blog.” It was deleted more than three weeks after it was originally posted. It had already been seen and noted by readers, so what harm did they think they were preventing by taking it down then?

I let my supervisor know that I wasn’t happy with how it was handled and explained my reasoning for posting it in the first place. I also told them I’d like to have guidelines so I don’t waste my time reporting/writing something only to have them deny posting. They replied “I agree that the other two Blue Exit blogs should have been removed with the first one.” That’s not what I asked for! They went on to write, “In an effort to utilize our full time employees better, we will be doing the blogging in house from now on.” So I lost my little corporate blogging job and the other perfectly bright Blue Exit posts were deleted.

I watched what happened to the blog afterwards, and it was depressing. The blog posts had errors and became more and more infrequent until they eventually just…stopped. The last post was Aug. 19, 2009. Right at the time I left, Fairplex was trying to ramp up their social media presence (Flickr, Facebook, Twitter, etc.), asking for my assistance on the horse racing end of it. That never took off, not helped by the fact that I was no longer there.

I wasn’t happy to lose my job, but I wasn’t dependent on it for a living so I felt it was more important to stand up for what I believe in. I was/am majoring in communication with an emphasis in journalism. I have been taught journalistic ethics and agree with them.

The Blue Exit incident prompted me to select corporate blogs as my topic for my senior capstone project, and now that I have researched the topic more I want to apply my what I have learned to my experience. What did I do wrong and/or right? What did they do wrong and/or right? How does journalism relate to corporate blogging? How could a situation like this have been avoided? I’ll address these questions in future posts.