Hartford (Conn.) Courant Editor Brian Toolan recently told Courant Travel Editor Denis Horgan that he could no longer publish commentary on his Web log, DenisHorgan.com. Horgan is a former columnist for the paper who was transferred to the travel writing position earlier this year.
After losing his column, Horgan decided to set up his own Web page, where he has commented on everything from baseball to the Iraqi information minister to same-sex unions. "It kept me happy and gave me a chance to keep doing things that I wanted to do," Horgan told E&P Online. "I do it on my own time, from my own house. I'm not competing with the Courant. I'm not looking for advertisers. In fact, it costs me money to do this."
But Toolan sees it differently. "Denis Horgan's entire professional profile is a result of his attachment to The Hartford Courant, yet he has unilaterally created for himself a parallel journalistic universe where he'll do commentary on the institutions that the paper has to cover without any editing oversight by the Courant," Toolan said. "That makes the paper vulnerable."
The editor added that allowing an employee to set up his own opinion blog was a bad precedent. "There are 325 other people here who could create similar [Web sites] for themselves," Toolan said.
Interesting to see how threatened mainstream media are becoming. And it's about time. Creating "a parallel journalistic universe" is the point of much blogging.
Jeff Jarvis at BuzzMachine puts it this way: "Many other media companies -- newspaper, magazine, TV, radio, online -- will need to start looking at the world in this way: from the other side, from the perspective of the audience, the audience as publisher."
Tip for Horgan: Pick a pseudonym like, I don't know, something weird like skimble, and then write whatever the hell you want.
Tip for Brian Toolan, his editor: Find a new career now, because the days of timid, pissant papers like the Courant are numbered.
