[originaltext] Do you take part in office gossip? I don’t like to think of m

Do you take part in office gossip? I don’t like to think of myself as a gossip, but I have to admit I often do it. I justify my behavior—perhaps wrongly— by reasoning that gossip helps me get information and figure out what is going on.
    Amid a rise in office gossip, researchers are disagreeing over whether it is fundamentally good or bad. Some defend it as a way of building bonds among people and sharing essential information. But others hold that office gossip can be rude and destructive, as the New York Times reports. (30) At one company. Printing World, which has a strict no-gossip policy, gossiping about colleagues can become a firing offense.
    In one case analyzed in a scholarly journal, middle school teachers’ gossip about their principal became so poisonous that the principal took his revenge—many teachers fled the school and students’ test scores declined. (31) In this case, gossip amounted to " a form of warfare that brought everyone down".
    (32) On the other hand, less evil gossip that stops short of repeating lies or spoiling confidences can serve as a source of understanding. Gossip helps us analyze the motivations of other people, and enables those low on the food chain, in particular, to understand how power is used in their organizations, says this New York Times article. It is relaxing, brings people together, and as a pastime it beats gambling, drinking or doing drugs, this reasoning holds.
30. What might happen to an employee who gossips in Printing World?
31. What do we learn from the case analyzed in a scholarly journal?
32. What is the advantage of less evil gossip?