Against my better judgement, I am writing about this.

At the “Is the next Martha Stewart a blogger?” panel at BlogHer on Saturday, the question went out as to whether anyone in the audience had been paid to blog. Both Helen Jane and I answered in the affirmative, and told our stories.

Helen Jane explained how she’d been a hired movie blogger on the set of I Love Your Work, but how the format didn’t really work since the movie didn’t come out for several years and by then who cares about reading a blog from way back when?

Then I talked about how I’ve ended up blogging for both my former and present companies. I talked about the silly, snarky fashion blog column I did at my last job, explaining that the company was so into the idea of having blog that they actually went through the trouble of hacking the design. They really recognized the value of the format and went out of their way to make my column look like a blog with comments and timestamps and permalinks and everything. I went on to say “Smart companies really recognize the value of having a blogger on staff and it’s definitely do-able to make blogging part of your job.” That was Saturday afternoon.

Monday night I got a call from my former editor. Evidently, someone in the audience at BlogHer heard what I said and took it as an insult against my former employer. They in turn told someone else, who in turn told the VP of the department I worked for at my former job, who, as you can imagine, was not happy to hear that a former staffer was standing up at some conference talking smack about his website.

What’s really confusing to me though is how what I said was taken negatively. Is it because I said the blog was “silly and snarky”? That’s exactly what it was, and by my design — I conceptualized and drove the whole idea! I said it was silly because I wrote it to be silly!

Or maybe it was when I said that the column wasn’t actually a blog, but that the company so recognized the value of the format that they made it look like one? Did that somehow get translated into “They’re posers” instead of “They’re smart and recognize when a format has a lot of interest and value and are willing to go out of their way to make a blog happen”?

Regardless, everything is ok — my editor reassured the VP that I wasn’t dissing anyone, etc. etc. But it’s fascinating to see how words can be misinterpreted. The best part of this 21st Century blog cautionary tale? You can listen to the podcast yourself and tell me: did I diss my former employer? I’m a notorious loudmouth and know when I’ve been caught talking smack, but this one truly baffles me. I complimented the company for recognizing the power of the blog, and somehow it turned into an insult. Clearly, something got lost in translation somewhere.