Find Jeff and Susan

Occasionally I run into an ethical dilemma with my blog. Today, I was looking on craigslist spokane for a creative gig, cause that’s what I do and I encountered another work for portfolio ad – believe me, these are common and I guess I’ve just had it up to my eyeballs with working for free so I teed off. I posted a reply on craigslist, posted a rather scathing article on my blog naming the company and waited. While I waited, Scott picked up what I was putting down and ran with it on his blog, then I got a comment and admittedly, I was surprised but ran with that as well.  By the time it was said and done, Scott and I had probably used the company name enough to out rank them in a Google search – which could be devastating to a small business.  A few hours later I received a sincere apology – another surprise and then the totality of the circumstances became apparent.  The craigslist ad was removed and I had won, but at what expense?  I want no harm to come to anyone by my blog – that’s not why I do this.   I do this to promote my writing and photography and web design.  So I had to consider the “ethics” of blogging – if content can be harmful to someone should it be left alone?  I wondered what would a journalist do in this situation.  I still don’t know the answer to this.  I considered removing the identifying information and publishing the apology to finish the story then it occurred to me that the only ethics I had to go by in this situation was my gut and my gut told me to take it down.  I’m not after a reputation as someone who attacks people.  I’m just a humble freelancer, trying to eek out a living in a difficult profession.  It’s very interesting that we always have the chance to re-evaluate our positions and make the right decisions.  For this, I am very happy of the outcome and hope our public discussion didn’t reach his customers.