I am sure that there’s more here than meets the eye. But if you just read her blog, Polar Penny, and the article in the Nunatsiaq News, it looks like the Nunavut Tourism folks over-reacted!

I am sure that we will have many more of these stories in the future in Canada.

It’s funny that the traditional media only covers these kinds of stories. I guess the fact that many people like myself, got their jobs, because of their blogs is not news. Only bad news about the Internet and blogs (or the stereotypical story that blogs are just about personal diarying and journalling which fails to emphasize that blogs are useful for many things besides journalling such as marketing and branding and reputation building!) is news worthy it would seem.

From Nunavut Tourism fires web-logging staffer - Nunatsiaq News:

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A Nunavut Tourism marketing officer was fired last month after a local resident complained about a web site she ran in her spare time. Penny Cholmondeley, known on the Internet as "Polar Penny," was surprised to learn on July 18 that she was being fired because of the online journal, or web log, she had kept since her arrival in Iqaluit in January. The web log, or "blog," was easily found by typing the words "Polar Penny" into a search engine, and often topped search engine lists generated by people looking up a local business in Iqaluit, or for photos of Frobisher Bay. During the six months she lived in Iqaluit, Cholmondeley regularly updated the site with details about life in the North, including photographs, anecdotes, and what she thought were personal opinions, including food and restaurant reviews. Cholmondeley was baffled when executive director Maureen Bundgaard said that she had received an anonymous complaint from someone in town, and that she had to let Cholmondeley go, just before the end of her six month probation period. Without warning, and with no chance to amend or take down the site, Cholmondeley was fired from Nunavut Tourism at the height of Nunavut's tourist season. When contacted this week, Bundgaard declined to comment on the dismissal. Cholmondeley says she never intended to associate Nunavut Tourism with a web site she perceived as strictly personal. "I'm kind of stunned." But the problem was that the web site, all about Cholmondeley, clearly states the reason that Chomondeley came to the North - to work for Nunavut Tourism. Blogs Canada, a web site that indexes web logs from around the country, described the site as "Musings on life in Iqaluit, Nunavut and the oddities of daily existence in the Canadian Arctic."

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