Social Media

When looking at how social media relate to sports and my topic, an answer became abundantly clear. Sports blogging really is one of the main markets in social media, and is quickly becoming a viable competitor in the sports media market, and it is rapidly moving to supplant newspapers as the first alternative to TV and straight internet news. The speed in which opinions can be formed, the variety of those opinions, and the rapid decline of newspapers and their sports desks have led to this.

Whole websites now are devoted to sports blogging. Espn has adopted blogs for many of their top columnists to disseminate information quickly and in short form. Even perennial newspaper guys like Sam Smith, Jay Mariotti, and others have moved online and to the blogosphere.It is really starting to take over. In my opinion, i think this may be a more viable place for actual benefit than political blogging and entertainment news blogging, purely because of the subject matter. Sports are fun. They are fun to argue about. In essence, that is the main draw to them, and sports blogging essentially takes the sports argument out of the bar and across the world. Now people can argue and discuss anything, and people enjoy that. With companies like ESPN, constantly updating us on the news front, Sports Blogs are less reliant on traditional news sources to fuel content. We read the news paper and watch ESPN on tv to get opinions and analysis about Sports, and with blogs, people can form opinions and analyze events as they unfold, without delay. Whose to say the guy in a newspaper is more qualified to comment on your favorite team than you. 

This also allows for a more perfect democracy as far as who gets read. Many lead newspaper guys have thier position, simply because they have been around forever. Sure, their experience may help them break the big and have good opinions, but online, it essentially breaks down into whoever is the best, gets read. There are no gatekeepers. I theorize that there is even less "Gatewatching" than in other forms of social media. Sure, there are a few blogs on top, but for the most part, the best writers get read. Luckily this is leading to those writers getting hired as well. Bill Simmons, also known as "The Boston Sports Guy", is one such hire. He started off writing for the Boston Herald, but soon realized that he would have to wait years to get his own column, sitting behind the old guard of reporters ahead of him. So he took his craft online, and started his own sports column (It essentially was a more well-constructed form of a blog before blogs were popular). After a few years of getting high traffic ratings and great reviews, he was plucked by Espn to write his column for them. He is now the most popular columnist on ESPN.com, and he is getting compensated justly for it. The people spoke, and now the companies are starting to listen. This is social media and democracy at its finest. 

Framing (Part 2)

Even in headlines, you could tell that ESPN was starting to frame the story. Then the longer form stories started cropping up on ESPN.com. The stories started to place Adenhart and his friends as martyrs of drunk driving and really emphasized the fault and blame that should go to the driver. They essentially made him out to be a monster, and I'm not saying he's not, but this is the way all of the stories were framed. They tend not to mention how the driver, although he had a DUI arrest before, tried to get some help as recently as the night of the incident, but was turned away. Or how he was kicked out of rehab.

Amy Nelson of ESPN was one such reporter who really tried to circumvent this company wide framing, and tell the story from an alternative angle. She wrote one story that was particularly striking to me. She essentially did a count up to the accident, with timestamps of what every person involved in the accident was doing, except for Nick. She wanted to get every other side of the story. So she narrated the 3 other victims, and the driver's day leading up to the incident, going deeply in to the driver's motivation for getting behind that wheel, knowingly intoxicated. I thought this was a great job by her.

She essentially took the sports out of an ESPN story. She removed the loss of a budding young Pitcher, and didn't once mention it from that angle. The problem that ESPN was having is that at the end of the day, it has to come back to sports. Sooner or later, there have to be awkward sequences on Baseball Tonight about how "Although the death is the real tragedy, and we're not trying to make light of that, but this really hurts the Angels' rotation now.", and if "This hurts the Angels' chances at winning the division this year?" Then there's the weird fantasy baseball moment where it gets mentioned that "if your team was relying on Adenhart, here are some pitchers you can pick up to replace him."

ESPN's unique situation as the chief sports news entity, puts them in weird situations when it comes to this stuff. Since they have to frame it 3 or 4 different ways, the company can come off as a combination of insensitive, oversensitive, grandstanding, or even telling an incomplete story.

Framing ( Part 1)

During the first week of the new MLB season, the sport was struck by tragedy. Young Nick Adenhart, a 23 year old Pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, was killed in a car accident, along with 2 of his friends while driving home from his first "start" of the season where he pitched 6 scoreless innings and played fantastically. It really was a sad incident. ESPN, being the self proclaimed "World Wide Leader in Sports", jumped all over the story, and rightfully so. They really did a lot of work investigating, telling and re-telling the story to the public, every day for nearly a week and a half. What I thought was interesting however is how many different ways in which the story was told.

ESPN is constantly in a difficult spot with these type of stories. First and foremost, their responsibility is to cover sports, in all its forms, be it analysis, opinions, reporting, broadcasting, and portrayal. So when tragedies like this one strike, it is their job to still cover this, while also fulfilling these other duties. I found this particularly interesting with the Nick Adenhart story. Firstly they covered it from a pure reporting standpoint. While watching ESPN during the night of the accident, I began seeing little headlines scroll across the "ESPN Bottom Line". Over the next day or two, I began seeing those stories morph into even more elaborate and detailed headlines, about newly revealed details on the accident, like how they were killed by a drunk driver, then how there were 4 people in the car that Adenhart was in, then about how 3 of those people died, and one was in critical condition. More and more of these little headlines crawled across the screen, but I noticed the tone of the headlines changed a little bit. Some I remember, were about how the driver and his passenger were ok enough after the accident to flee on foot afterwards, and how the driver had been drunk during the crash, and most notably, how he had been convicted of DUI before, and was driving on a suspended license. The stories got more and more grim.

Charlie V (part 2)

To continue, Scott Skiles is a big tough guy. He wouldn't tolerate headbands in Chicago, and he won't tolerate any percieved loss of half time focus. So he put the smackdown on Villanueva's mid-game "twittering", and apparently Villanueva's season as well. For whatever reason, this really landed Charlie in Skiles' famed doghouse. Skiles essentially busted Charlie down a peg or two, restricting his minutes and starting him less and less, even on a team that was essentially out of the running. Skiles was quoted as saying he didn't exactly think it signalled a loss of focus on Villanuevas' part, but he could see how people would think that way. He added that "My personal opinion is, it doesn't have any place in the locker room, the locker room's a private place for the players, a sanctuary for the players. But once you walk out of the locker room or whatever, I'm not into getting into guys' personal lives." 

So essentially because of a 100+ character text message, that probably took a minute to post, an NBA player was essentially benched. Also important to note is the fact that this is a contract year for Charlie, and any stat boost would definately help him get paid this summer. So I don't know if Charlie is so into the idea of playing under another contract with Skiles. He may have alienated another star player, because of a breakdown in communication, and an old-time way of looking at things. Skiles has exhibited an inability to understand rising cultures and trends in the league, like headbands and blogging. The strange part of it is the fact that he is one of the youngest coaches in the league, suiting up in a uniform as recently as 1996. 

I just seem to think it should be a requirement of a coach, a leader of young men if you will, to be receptive and open to new social trends and ways of expression. 

Charlie V and the Tweet Debate (Part 1)

A while back, a Milwaukee Bucks player, Charlie Villinueva came under fire for some questionable locker room behavior. No, he didn't talk back to coaches, and no he didn't disrespect teammates. What he did do however, is post to his Twitter during halftime of a game against the defending NBA champion Boston Celtics. Now this may not be the most aggregious teammate behavior I've ever heard of (Gilbert Arenas of the Washington Wizards was notorious for playing computer video game Poker before games and during halftime), but it is a little curious.

The post read as follows, "In da locker room, snuck to post my twitt. We're playing the Celtics, tie ball game at da half. Coach wants more toughness. I gotta step up." Not the most earth shattering statement, I know. Nonetheless, Charlie V took some flak soon after. Word got around the league that he posted this during halftime and soon enough it was a national story. By the time that got around to "Coach" Scott Skiles, he wasn't to happy about Charlie's up to the minute reactions. To properly portray this story I should probably include a little background on Skiles. This is his third NBA job, with relatively large blowups at his last two. Most recently he was the head coach of the Bulls, where he got into famous flare-ups with then-star Ben Wallace about wearing headbands, arrival times and other disciplinary issues. He's has a reputation for being a hard-nosed task master and a bit of a jack-ass (pardon my french). I recall future hall of famer and recent Olympic Gold Medalist Jason Kidd saying something along the lines of he's a backstabber and he wasn't too fond of him.