Twitter as News Conversation

Another catch-up posting. Last week, various news organizations were speculating about the fate of Arkansas' men's basketball team with the NCAA's APR. The news groups deduced that no members of an Arkansas class had graduated -- transfers, pro ball, etc. -- which brought forth the response of one of the members of that group, Steven Hill.

Hill posted on his Twitter feed that he was just one class away from getting his degree completion, and once that on-line class was done, at least one member of that group would be done.

This Twitter event brings to light lots of points to consider:

Right off the top, had Steven not made his post, everyone on our end of the equation would be gagged by FERPA to not say anything. He has joined into the debate himself, and that's the starting point for going forward.

One reason the NCAA is very vague and does its level best to limit data sets is to prevent the inadvertent singling out of individuals. In small count sports -- like a basketball -- sometimes it is pretty easy to figure out who did or did not graduate. Here's a hypothetical. If a recruiting class is four people, everyone knows one transferred from a news report. One went pro as a sophomore and the class has a zero completion toward APR guess what -- you just called out the other two guys.

Is it fair that only athletes get this treatment? At most institutions, the athletes are still ahead of the general student population for graduation rate. Within each group, there are always high and low exceptions. For every school where a sport might be singled out for lack of graduation performance, I'd be willing to bet their is a voluntary campus organization -- from performance to social to professional groups -- that has a similar poor track record.

Let's face a hard fact: college is an experience, and not everyone is suppose to graduate. While bachelor's programs across the country rapidly become more high school in expectation -- if you start, you should receive a degree -- not everyone stays. Nor should they. For every athlete who comes out early for a professional career, there is often a professional who decides that the business opportunity is better than staying in school.

I'll use two examples: Tim McGraw attended the University Formerly Known as Northeast, just about the time I was there. He was on a baseball scholarship and didn't finish. You know, he's done pretty good for himself. Shepard Smith went to Ole Miss and left before completion with his first TV contract in hand.

There are adjustments for APR to take pro deals into account, but the point of putting some scarlet letter on every person who does not get a degree is not fair. That said, the goal for every student we have in our care -- athlete or not -- should be to move that person toward their degree completion.

Meanwhile, back at Twitter, we have in this business a spread of the news sourcing. Traditional media make their news, but in this case, a subject of the news, gets the chance to respond in kind.

We all need to recognize that the more we become involved in social news gathering -- not just social networking -- that everyone will have a voice, and many points of view will be expressed.

The dark side is the speed of access to the world at large. We've had plenty of examples of hit keyboard first, engage brain second (Mark Cuban dropped $25K for his Tweets).

Consider the earlier post here regarding a student journalist that was going to harvest from Facebook. Or watching severe weather updates from untrained citizens? How about double, and triple, counting of flu victims? The troubles in Mubai on Twitter giving up too much information in real time. How soon before the race to be first results in some real injury -- either to reputation or bodily harm?