Optional Information

Kansas City, Missouri

Already Tried:
About two weeks ago, I consulted an attorney briefly to find out if any sort of protections exist for employees in a hostile environment. The editorial environment had not been good before I arrived - as the turnover shows - and didn't show signs of improvement. My employer was prone to intermittent rages, followed by disappearances, then more rages. When I accepted the position, I was aware the publication had problems -- copy errors were abundant, graphics were a mess and I was told it had been behind schedule for two months. The employer blamed the previous editor for this. After I started, I learned from other sources that the magazine had been three weeks behind schedule for about a year. What's more deadlines, when they occurred, were arbitrary and impossible and a variety of industry standards - like copy-editing, fact-checking - were either ignored or explicitly discouraged. After I had been there two weeks, when I started hearing my employer cite my own work as the reason behind the magazine's tardiness, sloppiness and even its 'management' troubles. This left me confused and a scared for my professional reputation. I hadn't expected to fix all the problems within two weeks - and did not - but I hadn't expected to become a scapegoat for troubles that had been endemic before I arrived. Thus, I wanted to keep a record of our communications, and started sending myself copies the emails he had sent to me and I to him. He said that it amounted to stealing proprietary information. As far as I know, there was nothing in the emails that one couldn't easily find in a google search (like contact info), or by looking at the magazine itself. It doesn't do investigative reporting ... In other words, I can't imagine what I might have sent to myself that would have monetary or competitive value. Plus, they were things that were addressed to me, which I had read ... Still, I don't know the laws.