Protecting your Corporate Reputation in the Blogosphere

By Jiyan Wei

Nadine Haobsh must have felt like she was on top of the world: she was an associate beauty editor at Ladies' Home Journal and was about to accept her dream job working for Seventeen Magazine. Her professional hopes and dreams vanished, however, when her bosses found out she was the anonymous author of the popular blog, Jolie in NYC, which detailed aspects of working for Ladies’ Home Journal and insights into the elite fashion publishing world.

Media reports spread the word of Haobsh’s firing for the simple offense of journaling about her exciting and wonderful job.

In fact, Hoabsh found that she had managed to blog her way out of both jobs, as Seventeen retracted its offer in the wake of her outing and subsequent dismissal.  The Internet was abuzz when news broke that Hoabsh had lost her job, and it was not long until mainstream media venues, including The New York Times, followed suit with coverage of the incident. 

Eventually Hoabsh even managed to get on network television, doing an interview with Amy Robach on MSNBC, in which she where she did a remarkable job appearing optimistic and contrite while eliciting sympathy from the audience:

“It was just a fun way to write.  A lot of my friends have blogs.  Blogging has becoming tremendously popular and so it was just a fun way to tell my friends basically what I tell them in person. . .I was just saying- look at what a fun job I have, basically.”

So what did Hoabsh do wrong?  She admits that she should have been up-front to begin with, because "things can be misinterpreted or taken out of context." 

At the same time, Hoabsh implies that Ladies Home Journal misinterpreted her blog and then reacted by brusquely firing her.  The Journal came off looking like a corporate bully that was against freedom of speech, a perception that has not been helped by the magazine’s silence on the issue. 

A little bit of digging reveals some interesting truths about the situation:

First, Hoabsh didn't only write about "what a fun job [she] had," she also wrote about "lavish perks...given only to executives."  One of her blog entries focused on the "beauty hierarchy" at Ladies Home Journal noting that her boss, "Regularly gets Marc Jacobs wallets and coats, plane ticket vouchers, iPods, overnight stays at the Mandarin Oriental, (and) yearlong gym memberships."   When taking into consideration the fact that Hoabsh's audience went beyond “her friends” to include public relations agents as well as competitors,  her criticism is even more potentially damaging.

Second, although Hoabsh represents her reasons for starting the blog as being innocent, it has been reported that one of her primary motivations was to land a book deal.   Apparently in pursuit of that goal, she reportedly e-mailed links to her blog and promoted it with people influential in her industry.

The final and possibly most glaring point is that Hoabsh may not have actually been fired from Ladies Home Journal.  In her own words:

“I wasn’t fired from LHJ, despite what’s [being] reported. I received a new job offer from Seventeen [Wednesday] (as beauty editor), and so gave LHJ notice. When the story broke [Thursday], however, Seventeen rescinded the offer. The Post is doing a story on it [today], and I cooperated because I wanted my side told as best I could (I’m sure they’ll spin it, but you know how it goes).”

It seems that Hoabsh is not the innocent and innocuous blogger she has portrayed herself to be.  At the same time, she has been proactive in positioning herself and her message both online and in the mainstream media.  How was a twenty-something associate so effective in convincing such mainstream media icons as The New York Times and MSNBC that she was an innocent victim while effectively tarnishing the reputation of a major New York publishing empire?  What might Ladies Home Journal have done better in this situation?

The first mistake Ladies Home Journal made was not being aware of what was said about them online.  According to cybersmearing expert Charles Pizzo, "Blogging tools have given employees a bully pulpit from which to spew company secrets. From Apple Computer to IBM, revelations have hit the front page." The bottom line is that for corporations, monitoring the Internet is no longer a luxury; it has become a necessity. 

Ladies Home Journal's second glaring mistake was not to publicize its perspective on the situation.  Instead of managing the online environment and the related mainstream media coverage, LHJ appears to have sat back while Hoabsh dictated the terms of its public reputation.  While we can blame the news media for failing to do some pretty simple research to tell both sides of this story it’s clear in today’s Internet-driven world that companies cannot count on the media to accurately tell their stories for them.

Ladies Home Journal’s actions may or may not have been justified, but its silence makes it difficult for us to fairly assess what if any action was taken and the rationale behind it,

The ultimate impact of LHJ’s action or lack of it will be known in the future, but today we can be sure that the magazine could have avoided the whole situation by being more attentive to the Internet and having a more proactive online communications strategy.  Bloggers and other online sources provided insights and details into Hoabsch’s activities and identity long before she became a reputation nightmare.  Like so many corporate-reputation challenges faced today, for Ladies Home Journal it started online, and they didn’t appear to be there.

Jiyan Wei is a senior associate and director of interactive services with v-Fluence Interactive Public Relations.  He is currently on sabbatical working on his Masters in Media and Communication at the London School of Economics.