New Media Everywhere

Our world today is dominated by the Longtail. The smallest of blogs (like ours) can stumple across a story, post it, and have it become a national story in a matter of hours. It is happening more and more frequently and even crosses national borders with regularity. –

Current Belgian Minister of Defense Pieter De Crem apparently stumbled into a Belgian bar in New York City on Monday evening with his entourage. Following his visit, bartender Nathalie Lubbe Bakker blogged about their visit (in Dutch), talking about how disgusted she was of how drunk De Crem was and how embarrassed she was about his behavior. Worst part, she wrote, was the fact that one of the politician’s advisors admitted to her that the meetings they were there for on taxpayer’s money were in fact canceled because the UN was meeting in Geneva (which is about 330 miles from Brussels). He reportedly told her they had decided to come to NY anyway despite being aware of the cancellation because the policital situation here was ‘calm’ and that he’d ‘never visited the city anyway’.

A couple of days later, someone from De Crem’s office had a telephone call with Nathalie’s boss, after which she was promptly fired. This was initially denied by the politician, and it remains unclear if her termination was a direct result of the call or the blog post in question.

Somehow, the story was picked up and got a lot of attention from local bloggers and the mainstream media, which ultimately lead to the Minister having to defend himself about the NY trip in Parliament. Yesterday, he made a statement to the Parliament admitting that a call was made but that there was never any insinuation about the girl getting fired from her job (which makes me wonder why the call was made at all then).

The message here is –

• No one should assume anonymity in your discussion with strangers or with friends in a strange locale. I am not suggesting paranoia just some diligence. If you want a private conversation, then arrange the setting to be so. But a bar or restaurant is not the venue for that.
• If you do blog, be aware of the ramifications of what you post. Blowback is a b@#%@ as this young lady found out about.
• It is wise not to blog about your employer good or bad generally. Even less so if it gets personal. What appears to be a innocent comment on your part may divulge processes or details that are not to be known to the public.

Having said all this, what the young lady did was a public service. She should have just provided it in a format that would have covered her personally. It grates to hear of a public servant, on the public dime, swilling like a drunken pig. Especially when the rationale for the event had a change of venue but the slob wanted to go road tripping to New York anyway.

Bottom line: Mr. De Crem, if you want to go gutter slogging bar to bar have at it. Just do it on your own dime.

Linky.