In the past five months, people who publish weblogs, or “blogs,” have brought down two prominent media figures and demonstrated an integral role in the saving of thousands of people in tsunami-stricken areas in the Indian Ocean.

There are approximately 8 million blogs in the United States, according to the Pew Internet & American Life Project. Most blogs are innocent little diaries allowing people to complain to the entire world or the two or three people that read it. Others are vial bloodsuckers looking to pounce on a questionable story, while business professors and investment CEOs run others. Regardless, the power of the blog is growing.

Everyone knows about the Dan Rather debacle in the run up to the 2004 presidential election. More recently, a top CNN executive, Eason Jordan, resigned after remarks suggesting the U.S. military was deliberately targeting journalists. The mainstream media initially ignored the comments until bloggers from across the country brought the remarks into the limelight.

The cases of Dan Rather and Eason Jordan go to show that journalists, government officials and citizens who have sacrificed their public privacy can no longer make accusations or claims without the ability to substantiate those claims. Employers hold the legal right to fire workers for blog entries if those entries meet certain criteria.

If an employee is in a policymaking position, then the employer has all the legal right in the world to fire the employee for their speech. This realm is reserved primarily for the government.

For those not in a policymaking position, you can still be fired for a blog entry. Let’s say you are working at Culver’s and it’s about closing time and there are roughly 30 cheese curds left. You want to eat them, but your employer says no. Mad, you finish up work, run home and type out a rant calling Culver’s the worst thing since White Castle while accusing the workers in your shift of being fat and lazy.

Unbeknown to yourself, a coworker has a crush on you and obsessively googles your name night and day and happens upon your blog and notices your comments about Culver’s and the staff. Mad, the coworker shows this to your boss, who in turn has a meeting with the rest of the staff. The staff takes offense to being called fat and lazy and a worker quits. Efficiency decreases as coworkers seem distracted by your comments and the morale of the workplace has been damaged because of one bad apple.

This may be an extreme example, but any time a worker’s comments, whether on a blog or in a face-to-face conversation, results in distraction, lost morale or a disruption in the day-to-day working relationship between employees can be grounds for firing.

Eugene Volokh, a UCLA law professor, says blog entries can result in firing if “the potential damage the speech caused to the effectiveness of the office outweighs the value of the speech to the speaker and listeners.” Therefore, if anything you say on a blog lowers the effectiveness of your coworkers or the company itself, you may be fired.

Enough for the negatives. Blogs actually do help people from time to time. When the tsunami struck the Indian Ocean countries, aid communities immediately scrambled to collect resources and send help over. Journalists were looking for reliable reports about conditions on the ground. The families of tourists were looking for all the information they could get on the welfare of their loved ones. What could be the one single resource that answers all of these questions? That’s right, a blog.

Tsunamihelp.blogspot.com opened its electronic doors and provided detailed information about conditions on the ground and the status of relief efforts. Since the initial days of the tsunami, the blog has successfully raised issues the mainstream media is failing to cover such as sporadic distribution of aid.

If you are regular person who loves your job and your coworkers or you are the only person to read or know about your blog, then blog away. However, if you hate your job, your boss, you like to complain a lot or are a government official then my best words of advice to you these: beware of the blog.

Derek Montgomery ([email protected]) is a senior majoring in journalism and political science.