As the Wall Street Journal recently explored, this can be especially vexing for layoff announcements in a world of blogs, citing a Yahoo case where “its instructions to managers conducting layoffs — ’15 minutes maximum,’ ‘don’t engage in small talk’ — were published by the blog Valleywag.com.”

Sites like Overheard in the Office offer an anonymous outlet for harmless (usually) office gossip, but how should companies prepare for the eventuality of a leak that could lead to legal action?

It can be somewhat of a paradox. Building trust with employees and fostering open lines of communication are strong tools for developing a relationship where those with access to sensitive information will honor its sensitivity. Some employees just won’t have that capacity – particularly those who are on their way out or know they will be soon.

So, another approach might be to limit employee access to private information to reduce the possibility of leaks a priori. However, this disintigrates trust, and can lead to cumbersome bureaucracy, censorship, and spying.

Some advocate for companies to act completely openly, as if there is no filter between their email screen and the front page of Gawker. From the PR perspective, this translates as “there is no such thing as off-the-record.”

To complicate matters – in PR, sometimes we walk a fine line of “leaking” information by soft-sounding reporters. It can be appropriate to build a reporter’s interest in a story by sharing some enticing details of a story without providing client identifiers.

And sometimes PR pros purposely and openly “leak” information in the form of an embargoed press release. But as we’ve seen recently, the practice of ignoring embargoes has been catching on, as TechCrunch recently announced they will ignore embargoes and WSJ partially adopted a no embargoes policy.

Have you ever leaked sensitive information?

Maybe don’t answer that on this blog.

A Deal.com Tech Confidential video interview with Silicon Alley Insider CEO, Henry Blodget below. Scroll to 2:00 or so to get to his take on the future of business blogging.

The gist is that pajama bloggers and traditional media are converging. As hobby blogs become more professional, traditional media are learning how to use the Internet to overcome the obsolescence of their delivery mechanism with NYT and WSJ as shining examples (although with the Wall Street Journal‘s online redesign isn’t so "shining").

He also criticizes TV as being one-way, which is rough for business viewers, who prefer to interact (like on Mad Money?). Although, with CNN’s increasing use of Twitter, that might be changing.

What’s your favorite example of MSM gone digital?

My colleague Yan’s recent post on blog commenters got me to thinking about Lithuanian politics, corruption, and corporate blogging.

Allow me to explain…

Comments, to me, are like mini letters to the editor. They empower readers and can often be more beneficial than the content on which they reflect. They drive blogging, provide it with power, and foster online conversation. They’re democracy in action!

That was my impression, at least until I worked on a political campaign in Lithuania. Tracking news about my candidates on the popular Delfi news portal, stories often received thousands of comments. I quickly learned that those comments usually come from hired goons who lambaste their targets within seconds of a story’s posting.

This was frustrating (to say the least) for high-powered politicians who tracked stories about themselves. What would you do if your competition was out there destroying your image via an unbiased news source? Would you lock yourself in your office for the rest of the day trying vainly to respond to every vile word (like a politician I knew did)?

This is not a healthy or effective solution. There are several "-bilities" to consider when responding (or not) to trolls and cases of flaming online:

• Credibility – There are websites out there that allow voting/rating on comments to varying degrees, among them, NYT, YouTube, and Digg. Until this is a widespread means of filtering out irrelevant comments, remember that comments can come from anywhere.
• Ignorability – Is bad publicity is better than no publicity? Evaluate whether responding to an incendiary attack will really quell any disputes. Sometimes ignoring can be the best policy.
• Meet up (ability) – Other times, ignoring an issue will make it worse. Consider engaging legitimate commenters, as Andrew Revkin, author of NYT blog Dot Earth recently did.
• Googleability – Fight fire with content by increasing the amount of Googleable news about yourself. From a PR perspective, this is what you should be doing anyway.

Surely, there are many more avenues to consider.

What do you do when your CEO wants to pull a Rahodeb?