New Media and Sports Journalism: Where does it go from here?

Warm greetings, energetic conversations, and laughter filled Neff Auditorium today awaiting part one of “Technology and New Media: Reshaping the Future of Sports, Journalism, and Advocacy.” Whenever the panel started, however,  the audience sat intently in silence listening to some of the biggest names in sports journalism discuss the problems concerning new media outlets and athletics.

Both students and professors, athletes and coaches alike were all in attendance to hear John Anderson of ESPN fame lead the seven panelists in questions primarily concerning the effects of technology on college athletics. The panelists were Mike Alden, University of Missouri Director of Athletics, Phil Bradley of the Major League Baseball Players Association, Myles Brand of the NCAA, VP of Sponsorships at AT&T Jamie Butcher, T.J. Quinn of ESPN, Sonja Steptoe of O’Melveny & Myers LLP, and ESPN.com and Magazine senior writer Wright Thompson.

Brands started the panel with discussion about the exploitation of student athletes. He discussed the commercialization of college athletics and how college athletes are often treated more like professional athletes rather than student athletes. Brands suggested the problems comes from commercialization of athletics by universities caught up in a spending frenzy. After answering questions from his fellow panelists, Brands asks that journalists present games in a way that the athletes are college athletes and not pros. In rebuttal, Quinn stated that it isn’t the journalist’s job to present the values of the NCAA, but to present exactly what he or she sees.

The panel then transitioned to Alden’s discussion of the exploitation of student athletes using new media outlets such as Facebook, Myspace, and text messaging. He stated that he can try to manage student athletes and these medias, but he cannot control them.  His job is to remind student athletes to be responsible when using Facebook, YouTube, or any other site similar to these. Alden also talked about the importance of keeping some things private from the media, such as hiring a new coach, while keeping himself accessible to the media for timing appropriate questioning.

All panel members expressed concern for new media, such as blogs and message boards, allowing anyone to put their opinion into the sports journalism world. Quinn summed it up best by saying, ” We were the gatekeepers, but now there is no gate around it [news].” Thompson explained that there may be 1000 rumors on a message board and 998 may be false, but he, as a reporter, still needed to go through them to find the two posts that are leads to a bigger story. He also said that he will follow a story through to the publication date no matter what another news source, credible or otherwise, publishes about the topic preceding his piece. Steptoe contributed that sometimes these new forms of media can be used as an offensive weapon against the people using blogs and message boards.

After taking questions from the audience, the session recessed for a short break before the second session. Unfortunately, I had another obligation and couldn’t attend Part Two to see what conclusions the panel came to regarding new media and sports journalism. I’d like to end this post with a thought form panelist Phil Bradley.

“You can still be a good journalist covering a bad team, just like a good player on a bad team.” – Phil Bradley on covering sports fairly and accurately

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ESPN Goes to Columbia

When this all began I wasn’t sure what I was really getting myself into.  All I knew was that I wanted to cover sports as much as possible, despite constantly hearing from teachers, adults, and advisers about how competitive a field sports journalism is.  I’m not going to lie; I often question whether I really want to pursue a career in journalism, mostly because of how difficult the path to ESPN will be.  Despite all the doubts and uncertainty, it’s days and events like these that help me realize that this is where I belong.

Just the atmosphere alone should be enough to convince any sports fan to try to become a professional sports journalist.  The first person I recognized was John Anderson, a popular anchor for ESPN’s SportsCenter.  For a moment I just stopped and watched him go about his business, until it hit me that I could actually approach him and introduce myself.  I didn’t exactly have anything to say, but I figured that at the very least I needed to shake the man’s hand.

The actual event began with John Walsh, the senior vice president and executive director of ESPN, introducing the Moderator for the day, John Anderson.  Anderson introduced the panel of seven, who would be discussing how technology is changing sports and sports journalism as we know it.  The seven panel members included Phil Bradley, Myles Brand, Jamie Butcher, Sonja Steptoe, Wright Thompson, T.J. Quinn, and Mike Alden.  It’s worth noting that Michael Kim, Matt Winer, and Norm Stewart were also in attendance, although they did not participate in the discussion.

For the next three hours the panel discussed a wide variety of topics relating to technology, and how it may affect the future of sports.  A particularly interesting topic arose when Myles Brand essentially said that ESPN has been ruining college sports by treating the athletes as professionals rather than students.  T.J. Quinn, employed by ESPN, quickly challenged that viewpoint, and from that point on it seemed to be ESPN versus Brand and Alden, the two employed by the NCAA.

As the discussion winded down, Anderson opened up the floor to questions, and I immediately took advantage.  As shown in the video below, I asked Dr. Brand a question regarding fan interaction with collegiate athletes, particularly recruits, through networking sites such as Facebook and MySpace.  He gave me a pretty political response in my opinion, but since he’s a brother in my fraternity, Alpha Epsilon Pi, I decided not to push him too hard.

Overall it was a very cool experience to get up close to several public figures who I can relate to.  After the discussion had concluded the panel members mingled with whoever was interested in talking to them, and were all very friendly.  I walked out of the auditorium with a smile on my face – something not too common after sitting through 3 hours in a lecture hall for me.