Saturday 9 October 2004

Croatian blogosphere shows influence

Blogosphere in Croatia is only 5 months old but it starts to show its impact very fast.
Latest incident is breaking story for croatian blogosphere . BLOG.HR is on their fits.
Sandra is a teacher ( elementary school Zagreb ) and the author of a blog on croatian blog service BLOG.HR and recently she was blackmailed by his employee because she wrote about injustice in her school.

Few days ago Sandra used useful feature in blogging service BLOG.HR which gives possibility every blogger to forward her/his story from blogging post editor to the editors of Blog.hr service.

Sandra's story was posted on the main Blog.hr page and soon reactions and comments started coming in. Everyone wanted to express and show support for Sandra's writing and her actions.
Later, Sandra erased those comments under pressure and blackmailing by the head of stuff of above mentioned elementary school ( these are saved from Google cache and posted on my Wiki page) .

What she wrote on her blog to actually pissed off the head of stuff of her school ?

She said that condition in her teaching room were very bad and awful ( she even posted picture ) . The rain and cold comes in. Then she's confessed that she gave her own money ( aprox. 500 $ ) for the building's adaptation. No support she get from the head of school and her collegues who were trying to isolate her. She becomes the black ship in the school among stuff.
On her blog she posted open letter to the head of stuff in which she expressed her sharp views for bad conditions and working with kids in such an environment.

The head of stuff ( director ) was described as someone who laught on all these Sandra's efforts and even called her " nut" and of very "bad psychological health.''
The open letter she put not only on her blog but to the info panel in the school. Parents of classroom's kids were also notified on numerouse meetings.

What's more, her collegues found out for her blog and started to copy her blog posts among themselves, and some of these posts were of very intimate content.

The hole story culminated on Wednesday afternoon while she reported on her blog that she got treats from the head of stuff because of the truth she posted on her blog.
The blackmail was, either blog or her job in the school. The stakes were high.
As all said above, editors alerted croatian blogosphere and support from other bloggers come in. The injustice was in the air and all had started to ask questions for what could be possible legal grounds for quiting Sandra's job.

Next day, the blogosphere found out that the head of stuff gave up firing her ( obviously he was aware of the blogger's storm and reactions ) but Sandra was blackmailed that she can work further only that she should DELETE "dangerous'' posts and she should discontinue writing her blog.

The editors of BLOG.HR service ( myelf included ) offered Sandra every help she'll need. Obviously, she expressed her view of not going further with scandal but to possible give up current blog and open another anonymous sometime in the future. It's her decision and it should be respected.
She saved her job for now , but nobody's sure what's coming next.

No doubt this story shakes up croatian blogosphere ( and possible will be picked up by croatian media which expressed interest lately for the blogging phenomenon ) which is still in early phase and immature.

Some quick facts about Croatia and our blogosphere:

- 4,3 million inhabitants
- 1,3 million internet users
- about 11.000 blogs ( first croatian blog tool is only 5 months old)
- 76 % mobile phone penetration rate


UPDATE


Sandra shut down her blog after all. It was her desicion.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

keep on the good work!

Anonymous said...
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