Michael Gee Loses His Job

David Scott has an interesting piece on former Boston Herald sportswriter Michael Gee in today's edition of Scott's Shots. It seems that Gee posted what have to be called stupid comments on the SportsJournalists.com chat board and these comments cost him his job as a teacher of a journalism at Boston University. From Scott's Shots:

Here is what Gee wrote at sj.com on that day: "Today was my first day teaching course 308/722 at the Boston University Dept. of Jounralis (sic). There are six students, most of whom are probably smarter than me, but they DON'T READ THE PAPER!!! Not the Globe, Times, Herald or Wall Street Journal. I can shame them into reading, I guess, but why are they taking the course if they don't like to read

But I digress. Now here's the nub of my issue. Of my six students, one (the smartest, wouldn't you know it?) is incredibly hot. If you've ever been to Israel, she's got the sloe eyes and bitchin' bod of the true Sabra. It was all I could do to remember the other five students. I sense danger, Will Robinson."”

Read Scott's Shots for the rest of the story and comments made by Gee. I'm very familiar with the SportsJournalists.com site and I give Gee props for using his own name on a site that is full of people hiding behind screen names. Jason Whitlock is the only other person of note that I can think of that uses his own name at the site. A few points.

1. Gee chose to use his own name and the site is a public site. He should have been smart enough to only post comments that he would be OK with seeing in print. Now he has to go through the rest of his career as the "guy who got fired for making lecherous comments at SportsJournalists.com".

2. This is the second person to be fired from a job in about the past six months because of posting at SportsJournalists.com. The other person was an anonymous poster but his work tracked internet use and was not happy with him posting or spending time at SJ.com on the company dime. No Internet site is worth losing your job over.

3. The site is not that great. Take a gander at some of the titles of some of the threads; "Game show hosts can be pretty smart", "Point Break is on right now!", and "Hitting on your dental hygienist's assistant" (this last one was up to three pages at last check)). Can you imagine losing your job just to preserve your right to post on those threads? Me neither.

4. I have to give props to Dave Scott. His Scott Shot's are consistently better than anything I read in the Boston Herald.

I feel sorry for Michael Gee but BU was right to fire him.