Do you have a FaceBook account? I’ve just set up a SmallBusiness.com group there and encourage small business owners and managers (current and future) to join it. For the record, the always trend-setting Marianne Richmond was the first person to join the group.

Also, while you’re at it, please friend me on Facebook, as well.

(See note at bottom of this post)

Brittney Gilbert, one of the nation’s first staff bloggers hired by a traditional media company, has just posted a resignation message on Nashville is Talking, the “hyperlocal” blog and “aggregator” site she hosts for Nashville ABC affiliate, WKRN-TV. Brittney, who often found herself caught in the cross-fire of local Nashville blogger political exchanges, cited her “thin skin” as the reason for her resignation.

Quote:

“The internet is a mean place. I know, because I’ve contributed to the mean plenty. I think it’s even safe to say that some of the hatred displayed toward me was brought on by me. I readily admit to being snarky when I should have been thoughtful. I was dismissive and sarcastic, when I should have been more open-minded. But, posting all day, every day will do that to you. Blogging isn’t meant to be done that way, on the clock, 9-6. Feeling pressure to constantly update will make you do stupid, careless things, like link to a screed I find abhorrent without making it abundantly clear to anyone who passed by what I meant. It was a lazy post, and it’s my own fault that people misunderstood me. It’s because I’m burned out. It sounds lame, but blogging all day every day can wear you down pretty quick. Especially when you have thin skin, as I do. See, I thought it would get thicker. And, in a way, I guess it did some. But it seemed as though people just got more and more vicious.”

Brittney’s departure from the station comes about a month after the departures of the station manager and news manager that oversaw the development of the station’s blogging strategy, although she does not mention their leaving having anything to do with her decision to resign.

Brittney, a long-time blogger, was recruited by the station about two years ago when consultant Terry Heaton and then-station manager Mike Sechrist developed a plan to reach out to the then nascient blogging community in Nashville. I’ve noted on this blog several times that WKRN (Mike, Terry, Brittney and others) did it right by respecting and embracing local bloggers in the only way that works: becoming a part of it, not with the cluelessness of a typical traditional media trying to impose pre-conceived notions on the rabble.

Brittney, after joining WKRN, toned down the language of her personal blogging, but was allowed by Sechrist and the station’s then-news director, Steve Sabato, to continue writing with bite, voice and attitude. She has aggressively linked to all areas of the Nashville blogosphere and, as a result, draws fire from all sides. And I mean fire. She lists some of the in-coming blasts she’s received in the past 24 hours in her post. It is this type of vitriol that has done her in, she says in her post.

Note: By mistake, I wrote-over this post and because of some user-error mistakes, I didn’t have a back-up of the post. However, I remembered that I feed the posts from this blog via RSS to my Facebook “notes page” and found it there. However, I think this is an earlier version of of the post, but I can’t recall what I had changed.

They report, you decide. I missed this drama when I was offline, but here’s today’s update of how Terry Heaton purchased a bunch of things from CompUSA, but when he got home, there was no camera in the box. (By the way, via Google, I just discovered there is a store in the UK called The Empty Box Company.)

I knew Terry Heaton before he was a “Texas Man” — back when he was a Nashville man.

Here are some fun reporter-math headlines from this morning, although this is more an example of a headline writer not understanding statistics than the reporter. Let’s just call them dueling headlines:

AP: Productivity falls in 1st quarter

Reuters: Q1 non-farm productivity rose 1.0 pct

So there you have it: Productivity either fell or rose during the first quarter.

Explanation: Obviously, whoever wrote the headline for the AP story doesn’t understand the difference in a slow-down in the rate of growth vs. a fall. Also, a downward revision of earlier estimates — that still is an increase in the rate of growth — is not a fall.

• Is regulation killing the exit strategy? FT.com
  This opinion piece suggests a perfect storm of regulations, taxes and lawsuits are conspiring to kill the golden goose of entrepreneurship: the exit strategy.
  (tags: startup technology entrepreneurship regulation)