Tuesday, February 17, 2009

The update from Charlsie.

We spoke to Charlsie about what happened to her intern blog, January in the City, in which she wrote, among other things, her (mostly benign) experiences being a NS intern. (You'll recall we posted about it a while back and it was picked up by Gawker.)

Here's what she told us what went down that day:

After calling the producer, Megan Alagna (who is such a sweet person, utterly fantastic!), about my blog being featured on Gawker and the reblogging sites, she told me to not worry about it and that the girls encourage people to write blogs -- so it wasn't a big deal. About an hour after I had that phone call, Mary called me while she was in LA asking me (aka yelling) how I could be stupid to write that stuff in a public blog and how I would write what she called "a nanny diary." I asked if she read it, and she said no, but that was besides the point. She told me to immediately take it down.

As I started saving my posts, the entire tumblr disappeared. I had no permission to access it. I could sign it, but I couldn't see any posts or do anything with the account. That lasted for a couple of days. I even e-mailed Tumblr telling them it was bullshit, and they responded saying they would never touch anyone's tumblr because someone else told them too. I sure didn't touch it, and all my entries were gone. There is no doubt in my mind that NonSociety had it removed. Eventually though, it was put back up ... just all the posts were removed, so it was a clean slate.
We were a little confused, so we asked to clarify: "So you basically lost ALL your content from that blog?" To which she responded:

Yes, I lost ALL my content from the blog, even just pictures of my boyfriend and me. It was all removed.

Julia apparently wanted to have an "end of the internship" conversation, but her e-mails showed her being upset about the blog. So, I just thought I would ignore her. She continued to call me (11:30pm at night on like a Thursday) and texting me at 2:20am in the morning telling me I had to talk to her. I even received an e-mail saying my internship form (which was turned in) wouldn't be sent until I spoke to Julia. After receiving a not so professional (at least in my book) voicemail from her, I sent her an e-mail telling her there would be no conversation and that I needed my form sent and everything handled appropriately in a timely and professional manner. I haven't had any contact with her since then, just the producer.

You can share this. I honestly don't care at this point. It is so disappointing when I paid for myself to go to NYC for the month only to run errands and then be treated like utter shit because I wrote the truth. I also think it is funny how they got so mad at me for writing what I did. What I think is sad is how they fail to look at themselves and see that they have so many haters who look for dirt like the stuff I wrote. The problem is them, not me or what I wrote -- however, they will never see it that way.

And this is the email she received from Tumblr support regarding her inquiry:

From: Tumblr Support <support@tumblr.com>
Date: Thu, Jan 29, 2009 at 11:20 AM
Subject: Re: (Case 22097) nycintern.tumblr.com
To: Charlsie ***************


Hi, Charlsie. It would be my guess that you clicked the Leave This Group button in the Members area for that tumblelog. That would have made you leave the group tumblelog and if you were the only Member/Admin it would have also deleted the group tumblelog. No one at Tumblr did anything to that tumblelog in any way.

The tumblelog is now restored. Please let me know if there's anything else I can help you with. Thanks for using Tumblr!

Marc :-)

--
Tumblr Support
support@tumblr.com

Charlsie adds:

There is no way in hell I clicked the Leave This Group button. Such a bullshit e-mail.

Honestly, this is such a crappy situation, and we feel pretty bad about the whole thing. She was just an intern doing her job, and she got shit on. Don't worry too much, C, just work hard and improve your writing, and if you still want to enter this profession that is sort of dying by the minute, you'll be fine.

39 comments:

  1. Oooh, this should be good.

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  2. That's it? No real scoop on the innerworkings of NS?

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  3. Wow. I can't tell whether I should swear off these people (Tumblr included) forever or just pop a ton of (non-organic) popcorn and sit in front of the computer all night watching for the internet explode.

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  4. Sorry for the premature post, kids, I hit publish before finishing the thing. It's all here now.

    Anon 7:29, honestly, we just tried to get the story on what happened to her blog. If she feels like telling us more, she will.

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  5. Mary disappoints me. I thought better of her. What did she care anyway -- it was JA who looked bad.

    Oh ... but wait ... maybe Mary was being protective of a friend? The way Julia always is to her .... oh .... wait ....

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  6. Oh man, if this is true and Tumblr actually deleted the blog and then lied about it, this could spell some HUGE legal (not to mention ethical) troubles for them.

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  7. "I sent her an e-mail telling her there would be no conversation and that I needed my form sent and everything handled appropriately in a timely and professional manner." Excuse me? Did you just ask JA to tow the line; to do the right thing; to move on and grow the f' up? You are gonna do alright kid.

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  8. I know Tumblr uses Amazon's cloud for images, but am I to believe that they don't do backups of any of their members' text content?

    How fucking sloppy.

    Well, unless they did nuke her blog and had no interest in being nice to her.

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  9. Someone simply MUST post this in the Gawker/Valleywag thread about Jules/Karp! 90% of Gawker commenters use Tumblr and I'm sure that this will set them off.

    Quick! I don't have a commenter name over there!

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  10. Erik, you know, that's a really good point. I've had a personal blog (now pretty much defunct) since 2001. Back in 2002, I was still using Blogger. One day, I accidentally deleted all the content from my blog (can't remember how). I was frantic, so I did the only thing I could think of: I sent Evan Williams an email, hoping and praying that he'd respond. He did, within minutes, and restored the entire blog for me. It was awesome.

    The point is, most content management systems have backups of their content. Blogger did back then.

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  11. I move that we se t up a collection to cover her cost of traveliling to NYC at the very least..

    Who second's?

    And than once its set up we make Gawker/valleywag aware of it..

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  12. I knew this would blow up. It would have been better if they had at least followed their own TOS, introducing a better worded "Harassment" provision and then giving the 5 tumblelogs notice (per their own TOS) -- not that that would have been justifiable, but this is phenomenally fucked up.

    And if it's true, then legal and ethical issues abound. Hope the investors/potential investor don't catch wind of it..!

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  13. http://mary.nonsociety.com/post/79205138-0-2

    Mentions her hardworking intern minutes after this is posted.

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  14. Is anyone else getting this freaky part-horizontal part-vertical scroll on the NS site? Just checked the link, Anon 7:47 posted, and I feel like I'm Pacman.

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  15. Charlsie, you have my complete admiration and support. I'll tell ya, girl, I was suspect because it was disheartening to learn that a young ambitious girl like yourself actually aspired to the JAB model, as I believe you initially did.
    But you've got some moxy girl. You will not be beaten down by the bs and in that alone, you can pat yourself on the back, look squarely into the mirror and say, yup, my vision is clear on this.
    I'm sorry about your blog being "cleansed" but it's a great experience for you to have survived the shark-infested waters and you came out with all your limbs intact, and stronger too because it must have been a hell of a swim to get away!
    Best wishes in all your future endeavours, you're a little bit of a hero already. Just don't get all stupid now and make it turn you all ego-bloggy! : )

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  16. I for one cannot believe "Nice Girls" like Julia Allison and Mary Rambin would pull something like this. That's more like something "Mean Girls" would do. And everyone knows they're not "Mean Girls." I saw it on a TMI video, so it must be true! They only want to build other women...um..er oops, girls...up! Not tear them down, and certainly not screw up their internships.

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  17. Mary was way out of line, and Julia I'm sure was as well (not clear from Charlsie's email what exactly was said), but regardless of how your boss acts, you don't just shirk a meeting (especially an important one like wrapping up your internship). I would have been scared to go to, but just ignoring Julia was really unprofessional and does not reflect well on an employee, no matter how fucked and unprofessional the boss.

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  18. I would have been scared to go TOO, sorry.

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  19. I feel like there is beef between Mary and Julia regarding this issue(maybe Mary was led to believe something different than what actually was on the blog...its deleted now) and now she realizes that Julia forced her to do the dirty work...I feel like that's why she keeps trying to get out of Fashion Week.

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  20. I doubt there is any "beef" between Julia and Mary about Chatlsie. I know sometimes people come on here and want to defend Mary or read into her comments as evidence of her supposed intelligence but let's face it: Julia and Mary are Captain and First Lieutenant on the Starship Bitch.

    If anything, this might give us more insight to Meghan's behavior in the last TMI video which was filmed when they returned from Davos and after Charlsie was fired, right? Meghan seems like someone who would have enough brainpower to realize how lame this whole thing is.

    I wonder how their producer feels about this.

    I really hope their site and Tumblr goes down in flames for this.

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  21. A bit off topic, but did NonSociety announce they were switching their pages because all of a sudden they were just no longer on my reader and now have different urls?

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  22. I want to know what Julia's voicemail said! I'm sure she was in major bitch mode.

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  23. Meghan! Get out while you still can! It may already be too late, but you must try!!

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  24. Wow, so these last two posts about Dan and Charlsie - I have no words. Every day, I think Julia can sink no lower and can't be any more slimy but every day she proves me wrong. Oh, Charlsie, I hope you saved those crazy voicemails and texts and will share them with the world (us) soon.

    Do you think the Baughers are staging an intervention? Julia's latest twitter: "My parents are visiting on Thursday - Saturday. I just windexed the inside of my fridge. Oh, you think these two facts aren't related!?! 13 minutes ago from web"

    Dear Mr. and Mrs. Baugher - PLEASE TAKE YOUR DAUGHTER HOME WITH YOU AND GET HER THE HELP SHE NEEDS.

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  25. Charlsie,

    I was Charlise-Intern and I made up the pound sign thing. I hope you laughed.

    Good luck. You did nothing wrong, as you know!

    FunnyBunny

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  26. Charlsie,

    The PROFESSIONALISM you have shown through all of this is valued attribute even in this economy. I see bright things coming up in your future and the future employer who will hire every soon.

    Also remember Charlsie that the professional skill in dealing with an asshole is more valuable to any legit professional employer than that asshole.

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  27. I feel bad for Charlsie, she probably thought this internship was going to be fun but then she was just turned into Julia's free personal assistant. Sure, these things happen with most internships (the gophering that is) but NonSociety/Julia have NO CONNECTIONS and could offer Charlsie NO PROFESSIONAL BENEFIT by having her as her intern.

    She probably looked up to Julia, believed all of her NonSociety crap (as evidenced by her old blog that defended Julia's "journalist" reputation quite a bit) and genuinely thought that interning for her heroes was going to be awesome and give her a lot of experience. And then: ugh.

    The biggest losers here? Tumblr and Mary Rambin, who was just starting to get some sympathy from those of us who thought she might be intelligent enough to begin to pull away from Julia's sad little game. Nope, she is just as vapid and dumb and mean as we thought she was.

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  28. Remember when they first named their individual interns? Mary's was samantha-- never to be heard of again.

    Who ever commented that Charlsie was unprofessional for not returning Julia's call got it wrong. When you are demeaned by your overlord, you have the right of withdrawl.

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  29. Samantha worked for them this past January. She worked over break.

    I agree with Anon 9:18 about Charlsie not returning the call. She's young, JA appeared to have power to her, JA appears to have been threatening, instead of just calling her JA pre threatened that she shouldn't send in the assessment without the meeting...

    I get why she didn't return the call. I would have done that same thing at the age.

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  30. Charlsie, I ahte to sound like a parent, but this was a good life leeson for you...run when you see a women that dresses like a 14 year old offer you an internship!

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  31. Nonny 7:39, Gawker looks at the emailed tips much quicker than the comments, usually within minutes. I know they're aware of this situation by now, but I thought you might like to know for the future. It's easy to remember, tips @ gawker.com (no spaces). ;-)

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  32. gawker has a new post-- JA is glad the hecklers have been silenced.

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  33. Total Jing:

    let's not forget, either, she was calling her at 2:30 AM...

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  34. "I would have been scared to go to, but just ignoring Julia was really unprofessional and does not reflect well on an employee, no matter how fucked and unprofessional the boss."
    Seriously? Since when does your "boss" call you at 2AM and demand an exit interview?

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  35. The most shocking thing to me about this post is that Mary used the pop culture reference "nanny diary".

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