The worst mea culpa I've ever seen

Stop me if you’ve heard this one before: social media director (Kurt Greenbaum) at a major newspaper (St. Louis Post-Dispatch) blatantly violates own Privacy Policy (using IP address for non-stated purpose) after being offended by a lewd word (“pussy”) posted anonymously, turns over information to the anonymous commentor’s employer (school district), and when confronted by his employer, the employee (anonymous commentor) resigns.

If you need to get up to speed, read this.

Greenbaum’s mea culpa is priceless. He goes on and on about how he’s not wrong and doesn’t really feel bad for his actions.

Shorter version: “Even though someone lost their job over posting the word ‘pussy’ anonymously, I feel no remorse because I believe I technically didn’t do anything wrong, and I don’t believe I went too far.”

What really gets my goat is that in the justification, Greenbaum goes so far as to say “We don’t condone vulgarity or obscenity on our site. We won’t tolerate it. Increasingly, we are concerned about the tone of the conversation on STLtoday. When we can, we ban people without apology for bad behavior. We have taken steps to beef up our review process and we’ll continue to enhance those measures to address bad language and intolerant speech.”

You don’t have to go far to find intolerant speech on the Post-Dispatch web site. In fact, do a search for “School Bus” (the incident where two African-American kids beat up a Caucasian kid on a school bus) or “Obama” (our 44th President, who happens to be black), and you’ll see the type of comments that are all-too common. Here are just two (in succession, from the same story):

But I digress.

So, in the worst mea culpa I’ve ever seen, Greenbaum says that this is a good teachable moment.

I’ll bite.

Here are 3 bulletproof ways to ensure that this never happens again:

1. Read up on social media ethics. Draft a policy. Make sure those in your social media team understand it.
   By deciding to take matters in your own hand – offended by the word pussy, ironically enough – you violated some pretty hardcore transparency guidelines when you went around your Terms of Service.
2. Install some WordPress plugins to Moderate Comments.
   This is the biggest facepalm in the entire debacle. The blogs on STLToday.com all run WordPress. There are ways to, uh, moderate comments with profanity filters, IP range bans, et cetera. Please don’t plead ignorance – anyone worth their spit in social media has had run-ins with WordPress, and thereby knows about plugins.
3. Enlist the help of the community to help purge unsavory comments.
   You’d be surprised how many people would volunteer to help out if it meant cleaning up the community. Empower them. Since you’re using WordPress, it’s super easy to set up roles. (Just sayin’)

What suggestions do you have to help clean up the mess at the St. Louis Post-Dispatch? Let’s hear ‘em in the comments.

EDIT: I’ve had numerous people tell me things like “I know Kurt – he’s a good guy.” I’m sure he is, but that doesn’t change the fact that he went too far, and now someone is out of work in a recession.