Bye, Bye, Marty

The furor continues

Marty’s story made it into Agape Press, a widely read Evangelical news service.

Three letters to the editor appeared in the Pittsburgh Tribune Review.

WORD’s cowardice
Fightin’ WORDs
Fightin’ WORDs II

In May, Powerball was interviewed by Bill Toland of the Pittsburgh Post Gazette for an article entitled “Bloggers find mixing work life with private life can spell trouble”.

“Shaun Pierce, a producer at Christian radio station WORD-FM, writes a personal Web log, dealing with issues of religion and politics and rarely mentioning his work. But when Marty Minto, onetime host of the station’s afternoon talk show, was fired a month ago, Pierce had a dilemma on his hands.”

“Should he address the issue on his Web site and discuss why Minto was fired?”

“Or was it best to let this sleeping dog lie?”

….

“Dare he?”

“He did. One of several Web log entries to address the firing said Minto was a friend, but went on to write that he was not fired for his views on the pope — something Minto had said in several subsequent interviews. (The station, in an official memo, said Minto ‘tended to unnecessarily alienate listeners.’) Minto, on another Web site, said that Pierce gets away with his blog chatter partly because he’s Roman Catholic, while Minto, an Evangelical, got canned.”

“In short, the whole thing turned ugly, first in cyberspace. But that sort of thing can end up ugly in the workspace, too.”

“‘All of the sudden, there was some national attention on what I was doing,’ said Pierce, 33. ‘If you think you’re blogging in private, you’re fooling yourself.'”

“Somebody, somewhere, is reading. That’s why Pierce, who is still employed at the radio station, now has placed a large disclaimer at the top of his page that says, ‘opinions expressed herein are exclusive to Powerblog! and do not represent the views of any employer, organization or outside entity.'”

Ironically, this article drew almost as much heat as the blog posts themselves. Consequently, Powerball has deleted all posts related to Marty Minto. He feels it’s better to be safe than sorry.