The Birmingham News ran this article about Doug Gillett, an editor with the University of Alabama's creative services department who had been posting "voluminous, partisan, well-informed, sometimes funny, and sometimes strident" commentary on the Internet for the past year -- "more than 800 words of commentary, pictures and links to articles on his own blog and contributed almost 700 words to the running arguments on Politics 101."
In his case, Gillett ran afoul of a state law that prohibited "state, county or city funds, property or time, for any political activities." Most companies and institutions have similar policies about Internet and facilities use.
That said, there can be great benefit to the insitution for blogs that cover work-related topics, both for public-sector and private institutions, and many blogs do this well. It's a tricky area, and the lines of demarcation between the individual and the institution are not always clear.
