Former Mean Girl Repents
Didja hear the one about the young writer who got her start as a big bad blogger—until a savage backlash from readers made her reroute her career? Well, check out the October Glamour, in which Gawker alum Jessica Coen calls for an end to the "unmitigated and unintelligent nastiness" you find online. How did Coen's Damascene conversion come about? WWD has the scoop.
Coen admits the backlash from her words made her rethink what was acceptable online behavior. "It's all too easy to be cruel from the safety of your laptop," she writes. "I certainly was at times, hurling my opinions with little regard for the effect they might have had. Now I choose my words more carefully — but it was a difficult and emotional lesson for me to learn."
We're sure all the unbylined bloggers at New York mag's website under Coen's supervision are falling in lockstep behind the New Niceness policy. We wish her continued success in her role as arbiter of standards and politesse on the Internet, but we confess to being a little confused: Isn't telling people on the Web to think before they type Rachel Sklar's job over at the Huffington Post?
