Christmas Ape, freed

April 17th, 2008 | Posted by PostmanE

It’s hard to add much to this story about KSK blogger Christmas Ape and his apparent firing at the hands of some humorless Washington Post human resources drones. After all, if you’re reading us, you’re probably reading KSK, Mister Irrelevant, With Leather, and Deadspin, and they’ve already dominated the thing.

But because this whole blogger/professional dynamic intrigues me, here’s two more unsolicited cents.

I’m new to the workforce, and I work for a dot com (though a relatively old one; nothing particularly new or startuppy), so maybe my perspective is skewed a bit … but I cannot imagine meeting a media professional who would genuinely think posting a photo of yourself with a mascot and claiming you were drunk is a fireable offense. A little stupid? Probably. Even so, what middle manager immediately sees that post and decides the employee has to go, like, immediately? A quick conversation along the lines of “hey, we don’t like this, so stop or you’ll lose this job” would have sufficed, right? A suspension for a day or two? A move to the back of the desk’s story rotation? I’m genuinely curious, because it makes no sense.

Second, it’s hard to feel bad for Ape, because as he’s pointed out himself, he gets to stay home in his standard-issue blogging underwear and write hilarious blog posts all day instead of stuff like this. One certainly seems more fun than the other. But that aside, I feel bad because dude got escorted out of the same building Scott Templeton was juking stories to get inside of. It’s a good gig, you know? I also feel bad for the security guards at the Post, whose lives have now devolved to the point where they’re actively removing a blogging threat from their building. Keep an eye on ‘im, boys. He might try to … fire up Blogger.

Finally, since Ape worked there and probably realized what would happen if he was found out, he gets mad props. It’s not easy to come out of the blogging closet sometimes. It’s safe, warm, and the only light is LED-based, which is naturally friendlier to bloggers’ reptilian eyeballs. Still, he was getting paid, so he made the jump. It’s not required, but it is kind of admirable.

Anyway, those of you working for newspapers: don’t blog. It’s a scary new medium, one in which a writer might actually reveal that he enjoys sports and/or alcohol. If every old-media journalistic beacon is as enlightened as the Washington Post, it’s best to stay far, far away.

And people wonder why newspapers are dying.