This week, a top reporter for WMAQ-TV, Amy Jacobson, was fired after she was videotaped hanging out poolside with Craig Stebic, whose wife has been reported missing.  Jacobson told the Chicago Sun Times that she was on her way to go swimming with her kids on her day off when Stebic's sister, Jill, invited her to the house to discuss the case.  The video raised questions about the ethical conduct of the veteran journalist, who had been assigned to cover the disappearance of  Lisa Stebic.

Jacobson admitted she did not handle the situation properly. "I know I made a lapse in judgment," she said.  "I know it and I apologize for it.  But I'm a competitive person and I did it to advance the story."  

Also in the Sun Times, Larry Wert, the station's president and general manager, said the matter was "a complicated issue" and "a close, tough call."  He praised Jacobson's work as "a valued member of the team for more than 10 years."

But he still fired her.

While it’s true that journalists tend to be held to a higher moralistic standard than the rest of us, there’s a lesson in here that we should all heed.  Just because you’re not in the office doesn’t mean you can or should conduct yourself in a manner unbecoming of a respectable employee.  When I visit corporations and speak to their twenty-somethings, I always tell them to watch how they act when they go out to the bar or the club together, because there’s nothing to stop some busybody from calling up the company’s HR department and reporting that a group of its employees were spotted dancing on the tables.

An effective corporate persona is the strong, mature, professional face you project to the work world, and to some extent, you should always keep it in the back of your mind when attending to your personal life.  Amy Jacobson thought no one would care what she did on her day off, and if a little business happened to get mixed it, so be it.  Don’t make the same mistake.