Popular Blogger Dooce Settles Lawsuit

Heather B. Armstrong, Better Known to the Cyber-universe as Dooce, is Done with Book Deal Gone Bad

Paula Neal Mooney, Yahoo! Contributor Network
Oct 14, 2006 "Share your voice on Yahoo! websites. Start Here."

Heather B. Armstrong, better known to the cyber-universe as Dooce, began her blog (Dooce.com) back in February 2001. As of September 2006, Federated Media Publishing reported that the uber-popular Dooce.com draws 2.4 million pageviews per month.

Dooce's large viewership must be warm comfort now for a woman who wrote that her site "chronicles her life from a time when I was single and making a lot of money as a web designer in Los Angeles, to when I was dating the man who would become my husband, to when I…lived life as an unemployed drunk…to when I threw up and became unbearably swollen during the pregnancy, to the birth, to the afermath, to the postparum depression that landed me in a mental hospital."

In fact, it was Dooce's ultra-personal blog and insightful ramblings about her colleagues and life in delicious minute detail that got her fired in the first place. But perhaps it was her parent's reaction to her online diary that caused the deepest hurt when Dooce's older brother showed them Dooce's postings.

"They knew the way I was living but they were never confronted with it," Dooce told the Salt Lake Tribune about her computer illiterate parents. "It was sort of throwing it in their face."

Dooce's dad didn't speak to her for three months, her mother was crushed and Heather was ashamed. Eventually, all the shame of it fell away, Dooce said, adding, "you can't be insulated from what other people feel."

With all the red-hot attention given to Dooce and her blog, a book by the honest writer seemed a logical next step. And in the Mediabistro article "From the Editors @ Kensington Books: Jeremie Ruby-Strauss" by Rachel Kramel Bussel, Kensington's Senior Editor Ruby-Strauss whetted readers appetite by inferring that Dooce would be writing a book for Kensington's Rebel Base Books line.

But in court papers dated June 19, 2006, (Juneteeth, a day of newly proclaimed freedom, ironically) Kensington Publishing Corporation accused Heather Armstrong of breaking a "binding agreement" and said that Dooce refused to sign a critical final agreement.

Whether the melee was actually due to Dooce being reassigned an editor at Kensington, or the "nerve-wracking" lack of contact Dooce reportedly experienced with the publisher remains to be seen, or blogged, as the case may be.

"At the beginning of July I was served court papers," Dooce wrote in her "Here goes nothing" blog entry dated Thursday, October 12, 2006.

"The case is a matter of public record," Dooce continued, "and I'm sure anyone who wanted to do a little research could read every sordid detail, or at least the plaintiff's one-sided account of the details, but I'm not going to get into any of the specifics here other than to say that I chose not to sign a contract and was sued because of that decision.

"There hasn't been a single moment in the last three and half months when I didn't think we were going to lose our house trying to pay legal fees," Dooce wrote, going on to describe the "…settlement papers…filed earlier this week officially ending what has been the most traumatic, agonizing, demoralizing experience of my life."

"I am angry and bitter and feeling all sorts of unbecoming emotions," Dooce lamented, but injected her unintentional humor that caused so many readers to love her over the years: "I was feeling as black and dramatic as every lyric written by The Cure."

Like Dooce, bloggers everywhere are probably relieved that the drama is over. We look forward to reading all about it.

Published by Paula Neal Mooney

Paula Neal Mooney is owner of Plunder LLC, a media and publishing company. A screenwriter and journalist for major websites like Yahoo and Examiner, Paula has also been published in various national print... View profile

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Read Dooce's Court Papers courtesy of trainwrecks.net

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Popular Blogger Dooce Settles Lawsuit

Heather B. Armstrong, Better Known to the Cyber-universe as Dooce, is Done with Book Deal Gone Bad

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