Friday, August 1, 2008

Paper trails: some are good, some can come back to bite you

When I was a kid the neighborhood bookie gave me some flash paper to impress my friends. Flash paper is stuff used by magicians; it's made out of white gunpowder and disappears instantly when you touch a match to it. Naturally bookies used it to write down their bets, and if the cops came to the door they could make their paper trail disappear in an instant.

These days everyone is looking for the smoking gun. And with anything and everything ending up on the Internet, paper trails are getting easier to follow.

There are times you need paper trails and times you wish what you'd written down would disappear like flash paper. That's why you need to be extremely careful what you put down on paper... or on your computer. Email is so easy to use, and yet it can get you in trouble in an instant. Something you thought was private can grow exponentially in a short time; and then you find your inner thoughts on the front page of the Internet.

That's why I discourage people from having personal pages that can come back to incriminate them. Sometimes seemingly innocent comments, pictures or web content can come back to haunt you. Things you thought you were sharing with friends can suddenly end up in the hands of management.

The point is, be very careful with anything you write on a computer or post on the Internet.

On the other side of the coin, we find the paper trail that can benefit you; it's called "documentation."

Many people find themselves in tough positions in this business. You might find yourself in a hostile work environment for several months, then find yourself out of work. You might need to offer documentation to anyone from a lawyer to an unemployment office, and if you haven't kept good records, you won't have a very strong case.

These are the things you need to write down, and on old fashioned paper that you take home with you, not on your newsroom computer. Were you harassed today by a co-worker or a manager? Write the time and date down, what was said, and take it home. You may never need it, but you might. Those types of paper trails are a lot more valuable than memory.

Managers are taught to do this in the event they need to terminate someone. You can't just arbitrarily fire someone without rock solid documentation. As employees, you owe it to yourself to do the same. Hopefully you'll never need that kind of paper work, but if you do it will come in handy.

Know when to write and when not to. And in either case, the computer is not your friend.

1 comment:

Randall said...

Rather than advise people against personal sites, I'd instead encourage TV news people to use them as brand building.

Example: RichDemuro.com/

Being on Facebook, etc, being careful not to say anything you wouldn't say in public, is helpful as people feel more attached to you when you're their facebook friend.