Like everyone else on the Internet, I guess, I feel obliged to offer my thoughts on the great PittGirl outing story. But there’s been so much said about this already that I’ll try to keep it short. (Short for me, anyway.)
1) I have a lot of respect for Virginia Montanez’s decision to out herself. She risked her job in order to speak her mind openly — despite a shitty economy. That takes courage, of a kind reporters especially should admire.
I also admire the fact that Montanez has been admirably stoic about losing her job. As she has candidly disclosed, while blogging as “PittGirl,” she slagged institutions that her former employer, the Negro Educational Emergency Drive, relied on for support. She’s long acknowledged that if her identity came out, she’d probably lose her job. She knew the risks of outing herself, did it anyway, and is taking her lumps with grace and good humor.
In fact, some of Montanez’s champions could stand to learn a lesson here, because …
2) While she was brave for risking her job, that doesn’t necessarily make NEED a villain for canning her.
Some bloggers disagree, apparently. Justin Kownicki says that as a result of PittGirl’s termination, “my respect for society in general continues to plummet ever downward.” The WWVB blog opined that “the person who fired [Montanez] should also be looking for work.” Meanwhile, Bram of the Pittsburgh Comet insists that “firing someone for blogging just isn’t right. I don’t care that it’s acceptable for some reason. Is it acceptable to fire someone for writing a letter to the editor?”
Infinonymous, meanwhile, thunders that
Unless NEED provides an adequate explanation, I wouldn’t object to seeing it wither and die.
NEED, as you may have heard, helps provide money to disadvantaged kids who want to go to college. But to hell with that! An anonymous blogger demands ACCOUNTABILITY.
But let’s bear in mind that Montanez wasn’t just some back-office drone. She was NEED’s head of marketing. And by coming forward, she didn’t just out herself — she outed her employer, too.
That put the agency in a bad spot, something local bloggers of all people should understand. I mean, I’ve seen plenty of internet speculation that Mayor Luke Ravenstahl, a frequent PittGirl target, targets his critics for political reprisal. I’m not saying that happens, or that it would have happened to NEED. But unless you think it’s totally out of the realm of possibility, NEED deserves a bit of sympathy. Had the nonprofit stood up for Montanez’s right to speak her mind, it might have hampered its ability to help other minds get a college education.
And Bram’s concerns about free speech notwithstanding, Montanez apparently was able to write a letter to the editor — about a hotly contested presidential election, no less — without losing her job. Maybe NEED drew the line at having its marketing head publicly insult big supporters like UPMC? If so, would it be so terrible for NEED to prioritize the kids it was chartered to help? I’m just asking.
Also, let’s note that NEED has not on commented Montanez’s departure. And despite the internet’s call for answers, that’s typical behavior by an employer. (Which just shows how unusual this situation was for NEED: Ordinarily, personnel decisions are the sort of thing you pay your marketing person NOT to talk about.) So we should acknowledge that there’s another side to this story, one we aren’t likely to get.
3) Finally, tomorrow’s issue of City Paper features a story about a couple of guys who were fired from their jobs, perhaps becuase they’d been participating in a unionization drive. Somehow, I doubt they’re going to become a cause celebre the way Montanez has.
Seems unfair, doesn’t it? If you write a humorous blog mocking pigeons and Ben Roethlisberger, your free-speech martyrdom gets a write-up on CNN.com. If you get canned after merely trying to get better wages and benefits for yourself and your coworkers, though, you have to make do with poor old City Paper.
This article appears in Aug 20-26, 2009.
For the record, about a week after the firing it dawned on me that PittGirl very often posted a few times a day on breaking news. Someone on Pittsblog called the same thing to our attention. If you ask me that gives NEED a legitimate out for their decision — blogging on the job, seemingly a lot — though a little part of me is still thinking, “Well, if you were satisfied with her work before…”
I saw that Pittsblog post too, but for all I know, Montanez had a flexible work schedule. And I can’t help but feel it’s not really any of my business anyway.
Just to be clear: I’m certainly NOT trying to say she deserved to be fired. Just that this situation is more complicated than some folks seem to believe.
“And I can’t help but feel it’s not really any of my business anyway.”
You are totally a minion now.
So Pitt Girl came back, on her own, and “outed” her self, on her own. She had speculate in the past that she might be fired if she went public, and that is what happened. It seems like she had a lot of control over what happened. I have to wonder if she had not decided that she no longer wanted to work for NEED, but wanted to get unemployment.
I don’t know anything about her letter to the editor, except that Chad Hermann basically admitted he put it in his blog to deliberately provoke Pittsburgh liberals. Which just makes me feel tired.
Yet again, Ed, you misrepresent what I wrote. Which makes me, I assure you, more tired than you could ever feel.
I noted it in the blog, because I wanted to see how The Minions felt about it. I suspected they would be apoplectic. Or at least conflicted. With the obvious exception of Bram, who was both honest and interesting in his reaction, I may well have been wrong.
It seems to me that the more anyone provokes Pittsburgh liberals (and moderates, and conservatives), the better. Because the less complacency we have around here, the better.
Oh, and Chris — I’ve told you this in private, but I’ll say it here in public too: brilliant post.
Well, Chad, I stand corrected, you were addressing the minions.
I don’t disagree that people (voters) around here and everywhere could stand to be provoked some. But it matters what form the provocation takes. As an example we probably both can agree on, some people are likely provoked but not informed when Chuck Grassley says something about “a government run plan to decide when to pull the plug on Grandma.”
It’s official: We’re all tired.
For the record, I did feel like I was being baited / provoked almost specifically, like a lab rat, given the lack of opinion or direction offered by the blog post’s author, but I figured eh why not play along, he brought some interesting news to light.
In your last comment Chad you write:
“Maybe I’m off-base on this. Maybe everyone really can separate one from the other — at least when it’s someone they (feel they) know and love.”
I think so — and even when it’s someone they don’t know. The whole dogfighting jag didn’t diminish Michael Vick’s reputation as a football player. And I guess I do equate espousing certain political views to conducting dog fights — because I believe that politics matter, and that some political views are inherently cynical and opportunistic. Though the truth is often in the middle, I think at least as often it also resides firmly on the left or the right, right or wrong, good or evil.
I did not propose that educational opportunities for disadvantage students be dispatched to hell. I expressed indifference to NEED’s continued existence, for the stated reason that I would expect another entity to readily replace NEED (whose focus appears to be on taking credit for distributing government funds) with respect to good works.
Political retribution is often undisguised in Pittsburgh, but even the dumbest and most brutish among Pittsburgh’s elite would likely refrain from interfering with a dollar of NEED’s funding in the wake of PittGirl’s unmasking. I doubt NEED would have experienced a dime’s diminution consequent to PittGirl’s revelation, just as I doubt NEED’s demise would deprive a deserving student of support.
That said, Chris, you advance several fine points (which is more than I would say, after limited exposure, about PittGirl’s work) that incline me to reconsider. As I indicated at my place, an adequate explanation from NEED also would cause me to reconsider. Until then, firing Virginia Montanez strikes me as a cowardly, unnecessary, unkind act, one that makes me indifferent to NEED’s continued existence.