I honestly don’t know where to begin with this one. Paid Content UK has revealed Johnston Press is banning employee access to Facebook, requiring journalists to ask permission from their department head, and contact the IT department.

Apparently it’s due to Facebook comprising more than half of the company’s outbound internet traffic. (They’re by no means alone in this…I can vouch for plenty of media and non-media business with the same traffic ratios).

PaidContent raises two important points – journalists are finding the site incredibly useful for their work, and Johnston titles run their own Facebook pages already!

In addition, I’d remind Johnston that it’s a media/content company, and everyone in the company should be able to not only use Facebook for work-related tasks, but also to be thinking about how Johnston will exist in the networked world.

And I’d see how many people in the Johnstone offices are now checking their mobiles more often…

It makes a smuch sense as banning people from reading printed news.