By Pete Cataldo, Account Executive
This Sunday, millions of people will grab their nachos and pizza and chili and wings and gather in living rooms and sports bars around the world to watch one of the biggest sporting events of the year: Super Bowl XLIV. While the game is played on the field, a duel match will be played off of it, in the world of Social Media.
Wednesday night, a panel of sports journalists discussed the changing landscape of their field and how it is reported and written:
· Dan Shanoff (moderator) – SportingNews.com columnist, creator of "The Daily Quickie" on ESPN.com
· Will Leitch – New York Magazine columnist/contributing editor, Deadspin founding editor
· Jason Fry – National Sports Journalism Center columnist
· Stephanie Wei – Writer/editor of golf blog: Wei Under Par
· Amy Nelson – Writer for ESPN.com
Social Media has completely changed the way sports are covered. Never before have fans been able to get real-time access from journalists covering the games in the press box. But, Sunday night, while the Colts and Saints are worried about winning the big game, reporters will be strategizing how to score points with fans following their feeds on Twitter.
“If a fan asks a question through Twitter that might be of relevance, a reporter might make note of that and say, ‘that was a good point, let me ask the player about that in the locker room after the game,’” Will Leitch said. “We’ve never seen anything like that before.”
The discussion quickly turned to the public relations impact of social media on the sporting world.
Flashback to four years ago, when pictures of a partying Steelers Quarterback Ben Roethlisberger were shown on a tiny online publication called Deadspin. Local media in Pittsburgh ate it up, and questioned “Big Ben” about it. It caught like a wildfire and spread nationally. It was unprecedented.
Now, it’s old hat.
Just this year, Portland Trailblazers Center Greg Oden was caught with his pants down in a nude “self-portrait” of himself. The media frenzy was not nearly as heavy as it was for the Steelers star. Why? Oden came out, apologized, and got ahead of the major media buzz.
“I’m certain that is part of the training for PR teams of sports franchises now,” Jason Fry said. “We’ve gotten so used to social media that it’s almost invisible. It’s just what we do. So, [PR pros] must be ready for this sort of thing when it comes, by getting out in front of the story right away.”
Tiger Woods might be the best example of where PR through Social Media (or in his case, a lack thereof) can go wrong. By doing the exact opposite of Oden, and not addressing the problem, his situation festered and ballooned from what was originally thought of as an accident and a heroic effort to save him by his wife, to a scandalous front-page-headline-grabbing extravaganza.
“Poor management by his handlers there,” Leitch said. “His team was not equipped to handle [crisis communications]. Here was an athlete built up to invincibility, and then did not adjust as things went wrong. Instead, he gave these PR canned responses through his website.”
The story-telling has been affected, too. With interaction through avenues like Twitter, and real-time updates made available through everyone’s smartphone, there seems to be less and less interest in the meat and potatoes of the beat writer’s craft: the game recap story.
“People today read everything but the game story,” Amy Nelson said, “So, our job is trying to come up with a different angle, a different storyline that appeals to the reader and piques their interest.”
This Sunday, Peyton Manning and Drew Brees won’t be the only ones scratching their heads as they try to figure out how to beat a defense for a touchdown. Journalists down in South Florida will be scratching theirs, trying to figure out how to make their next Twitter post interesting enough to make you read tomorrow’s headline.
“We have these insane deadlines to get print on chunks of wood to ship to you the next morning reporting something you already know about because of SportsCenter, Twitter or your iPhone,” Jason Fry said. “So the next step is to engage you during the game through those very same avenues.”
We would love to continue the conversation on this topic. Leave a comment below, send me an email, or you can always follow me on Twitter.
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