Sorry to be Away, but This Can't Wait

Watching the Texas A&M email scandal while finishing our women's basketball guide . . .

Sorry for the long break, but this angle today needs notation. If you don't think the citizen media world isn't going to dominate sports soon, consider this move by TAMU. From the Dallas Morning News account of the scandal today:

The university temporarily shut down its entire athletic Web site and listed only links to various .pdf files so fans could judge the content for themselves.

If that isn't crowd sourcing your truth, I can't think of a better example.

At the Speed of New Media

Today, 34 minutes from booking posting to message board. That tops the earlier 57 minutes.

Never for a minute thing the public isn't watching like a hawk.

Choose Your Friends Carefully

A new twist on an old theme -- on the social networking websites one must be careful who one becomes friends with. Unlike worrying if the person you let into your private area might one day tag you out with compromising photos or data you never thought would see the light of day, this time you could get a visit form the local gendarmes.

Removing the names to protect the innocent, seems like a University had a break-in and theft of several computers. It appears to be an inside job since the perp knew exactly where the computer storage room was within the facility. The suspect also removed the license plate and shielded the face from known security cameras.

Here's where it gets interesting: Last card swipe into the facility was a female. Thief appears to be male. First place the PD looks for a list of potential associates of female that might fit the description of the male? Female's Facebook friends list.

Which Part of Public Did You Not Understand?

More trouble for student privacy as Facebook announces that it will begin to allow search engines to access the system. That means if you have not elected to make your pages private, you can add the ability of future employers and profilers to simply google your pages.

Quoting one of Facebook's engineers: “We’re not exposing any new information, and you have complete control over your public search listing.” Surprise? Not.

At the same time, several student newspapers have launched vicious attacks on the decision, notably accusing Facebook's founder of no longer being the student-friendly little start-up. Isn't that the point of getting a degree and moving on after college -- to make money and be successful? In particular, Cornell students, wake up. Quoting from the linked editorial: "Facebook isn’t secure anymore, and there are ways to get around the privacy settings that we put up to save ourselves from parents, employers and overly-solicitous lab partners alike."

Shocking news: More than your future hook-ups are checking you out.

Social Network Bill of Rights

Finally, a movement to take control of your data and your privacy. Far too many people do not realize that your data, your images, your information does not belong to you once posted on-line. Learn more and sign on to the movement: jump here.

As Long As You're the Same Person in Both Places

We recently had some preseason features on an athlete at our university. Two newspaper writers both indicated they needed to check some information on the athlete. Both items came from the athlete's Facebook page. Both also indicated their first stop before doing an interview was to pull up the Facebook to see what angles they might find for a feature.

Just another area where students need to be careful, but a special case for athletes. Many times, hobbies, personal likes and dislikes, family information is included in press guides or official athletic department website bios. If the social networking website profile echoes or expands on the personality of the student-athlete, great. However, if it reveals a completely different person, then that's going to be an issue for both the athletic department -- caught "red handed" perpetrating a false image -- and the athlete -- particularly if the fun and interesting new hobbies involve questionable activities.

For example, Christian conservative athlete in official bios found simultaneously to favor conspicuous consumption of hemp products.

A brilliant moron

That's my best estimate of today's soccer. It's a pretty good barometer of our world today. Ashley's U12 team opened with great execution and a 9-2 local league result. Yours truly was coaching. Get home this evening, and read the comments on our website that whoever was the talent on the Friday night webcast of Lady'Back soccer must have been unpaid students cause they didn't know anything about the game. Hmm. Guess that makes me a brilliant moron. The unpaid part, yep, that was true -- I step in and volunteer on that gig cause I enjoy it, plus I get the chance to mentor some young UA students that want to try broadcasting. I hope the coaches don't cut my pay after the email.

Whew

Long weekend, but what a weekend in Canada. Vancouver is a beautiful town, and the games were outstanding. I can't imagine what could have made it better as a foreign tour. OK, we could have pulled out the last second win at Simon Fraser. That aside, our young players had a chance to mature in game situations, our veterans got some quality reps against Canada's best two teams.

Personally, it was a thrill to bump into John Tilley at the west coast location of Tilley Endurables. The tour through the EA complex from my former student assistant was an experience. By the way, if you had any doubts about the upgrades, the preview of NBA 2008 (compared to NBA 2007) was eye opening. I thought the current products were realistic -- the new frame rate makes them scary realistic.

Well, there is one error. I pointed out there isn't an SID or stat crew at the scorer's table. I volunteered to do the mo-cap, but the studio was closed over the weekend. Maybe next year.

Somedays, The Media Really Doesn't Matter

Not that those with this blog would be surprised, but raw source media is growing by leaps and bounds, and of course that is driving the citizen media. Today's lesson involves the speed of bad news.

A huge storm rolls through Fayetteville this AM -- which has me up at 6 trying to protect my wife's garage sale displays from the storm. Come inside and while checking radar scans and killing time, I do my usual morning survey of the MSM, blogs and boards.

The notice of an arrest of an athlete catches my eye, so I go to check the thread. We are a county where the jail intake -- read bookings -- are posted on the sheriff's website. Media watch it, but so do citizen media. Check this timeline:

Booking: 3:19 am
First posting: 4:32 am

That's scary enough, but its a Saturday and one can reasonably expect the regular media won't take this up until the Sunday papers, maybe the 10 pm news tonight. I get the expected calls from colleagues that also monitor new media, and it's made those rounds by noon.

Here's the kicker, late afternoon after the garage sale -- about 4 p.m. -- I'm at the checkout of the local natural foods store picking up some turbino sugar (and if you like coffee, let me tell you there is absolutely no finer sugar for your java). Young guy, I'll guess 20 at the outside, notices my hat and begins to make chit-chat about athletics. Mentions an injury that was in the paper this morning. Then he hits me with the whopper.

"So, how about (athlete) getting arrested this morning."

Parce it: This is the checker at the health food store. Not exactly a sports talk/message board environment. He's asking me about an incident that at this time is about 12 hours old, that has not been in any media, on any call-in show, on any sportscast because on Saturday in this town there aren't ANY of these until the evening.

How did he know? Maybe co-workers chatting (I doubt), maybe friends during the day (better), maybe he's also a fan of the county sheriff website (also doubtful). I didn't ask, because I didn't want to prolong or draw attention to the athlete's misfortune -- move along, nothing to see here, move along -- but the most likely source of his news: one of the four or five major Razorback boards which were doing dot-com stock traffic business on the info.

All and all, it's just another brick in the wall.

First Week at NWACC; T-Minus One Week

A double dip this week as the semester begins for both UA and Northwest Arkansas Community College. And, for the first time in almost 20 years, that means I'm back in the classroom on a regular basis. American History, second half, and I must say that it is great.

However, here's the creepy thought for the day. Those students in my classes back at NLU -- these could be their children at NWACC.

Today marks one week left until we depart for Canada and the basketball foreign tour. Expect some travel oriented editions of the blog.

Nothing Like the Start of the Semester . . .

. . . to bring your world to a screeching halt.

But this just in over the transom, the latest in ham-fisted corporate viral marketing. Looks like the Big Ten vs. Comcast bombast is taking it to the message boards. For those not following earlier, Big Ten is creating its own sports network, Comcast isn't wanting to agree to carry it on its cable systems and hilarity has ensued.

Seems Comcast is funding a "student/fan" website that is carrying on a beat-down campaign against the Big Ten commish, and was outed by one of the Michigan State websites.

The thing about those internets people, they may have Cheeto dust on their fingers, but they do know how to look up an IP address: Jump here for more.

Why Didn't I Think of That

This is a little off topic, but I can't resist. I absolutely hate cheese on my burgers. And if I've had to peel cheese off one Quarter Pounder, I've probably scraped cheese off 10,000 during my lifetime.

If only I'd thought to sue. Ten million dollars.

Media Training for Parents Next?

The SID community has put considerable resources into working with student-athletes to make them aware of the risks and pitfalls of working with the media. Maybe we've done too good a job as the media has moved on to find new unsuspecting folks to quote: their parents.

Not many days go by without a parental miscue, from speaking about on coaches to predicting player futures. Today's entry belongs to one of our own at Arkansas, Darren McFadden, who's mom got taken off-guard by ESPN to say her son would be leaving after the season.

It's in the after the interview coverage that we get a glimse, courtesy of the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, into her remorse:

“ Lord knows I don’t want to be the one to advertise it [if McFadden decides to turn pro after this season ]. I’m not trying to tell anything and hurt my son. They’re going to make me not talk to nobody.”

I'm confident mom means the media when she says "they". The media is doing it's job asking questions and trying to get news, but I'd be willing to bet its the last quote for ESPN.

Oh Behave, Baby

In my best Austin Powers voice, have you seen the mojo? No, not Austin's Swedish-ly enhanced mojo, the brand-spankin' new label for mobile journalists touted by one chain in particular.

Hmm, I thought anyone who wasn't working on the desk was a journalist capable of being moving, but I digress -- don't let thinking get in the way of pimping, oops, I mean marketing, nope that's so 20th century, rebranding (yeah, that's the ticket) this revolutionary concept.

Give a reporter a laptop, a cell card, a digital camera, maybe even a digital video recorder and send them out in the field to send back stories. They will work from their vehicles! Equally stunning news -- they may not come into a desk in the office!!!

When they come to a regular reporter and tell him he's about to become a mojo, is the replicant already coming out of the basement pod?

Fort Myers News-Press is one of the Gannett properties hyping its mojo. They're also adding in those other new-wave terms of "crowdsourcing" (interestingly, now one word so I guess there's a little branding going on there) and "audience building".

The story in the Washington Post about these nifty hyper-local micro-site journalism innovations carried what has become the standard Michael Maness, Gannett VP for strategery, line on crowdsourcing. However, I do think the Dr. Evil twist in this quote is worth mentioning:

Crowdsourcing will "enable people to do digging themselves and maybe find conclusions we won't. It's having thousands of investigative reporters instead of three."

Perhaps I should provide a more serious analogy: Robespierre didn't imagine the Committee of Public Safety getting out of hand either.

Future Continues to Trend Internet

Pew Research Center weighs in with a new poll on public opinion regarding the media. Compared to a similar 1985 survey, the general view of the media is down; but dramatically down among younger news consumers that get the majority of their information from the internet.

More than 50% of those surveyed didn't believe the mainstream media. Not a good trend. Here's a quick story on the results.

At This Pace, Both the Media and SID are Out

How about this new Google wrinkle -- adding comments from the sources of stories alongside the search results. So, citizen media can write about a story, post it on the blog and Google will gather feedback on the journalists from the people involved.

Read more at the Center for Citizen Media website.

Once Again, You've Got Two Choices

Dipping into the political world, Mitt Romney's campaign got caught in a digital crossfire when the candidate went on with a talk radio host in Iowa. The station was recording everything for its webcam. Politico has a much better indepth take on what happens next, but for the sports world it reinforces the two decisions you have on days like this.

Romney got caught. He's animated, passionate -- bordering on mad -- with the host. Not the cool, collected image he wants. Knowing the radio station would post the video, his campaign people went first and set the stage by claiming here's Mitt unleashed. They made a positive of the candidate taking the gloves off and showing his passion. Nice.

Better than the alternative -- waiting for someone else to define your person for you.

More on Those Internets

Not exactly where you might expect to find one of these chestnuts, but Tony Blankley was railing on against withdrawal from Iraq and promoting his book, The West's Last Chance, when he delivered this prescient thought about the internet.

From the Fishwrap blog:

Mr. Blankley said that technology has helped spread the violent extremist message of radical Islam. "The Internet has been the purveyor of these ideas across the globe," he said, comparing the way the Internet has spread radical Islam's message to the way in which Guttenberg's development of the printing press helped spread Protestant Christianity.

Certainly speaks to the sea change nature of the net, but is he reaching? Discuss.

How Many Times Do You Have to Say It?

Regulars here will find this passage remarkably familiar:

Investigations would no longer be conducted by a coven of professionals working in secret. Instead, they'd be crowdsourced — farmed out to readers who'd join in the detective work. Gannett papers would also become repositories of local information, spilling over with data about everything from potholes to public officials' salaries. "We must mix our content with professional journalism and amateur contributions," read one of the PowerPoint slides prepared by Gannett execs. "The future is pro-am."

For the whole story on how Gannett invents the future, jump here.

Once again, this is coming to sports and it will likely start on more college campus than just Arkansas. I know it's the near future -- at least, who knows it just might be a trend, but I doubt it -- because this is what we are living today. It has split the local media right down the middle between those who let the crowd drive their agenda and those who cleave even closer to their sources.

Surely Sanity will Reign

When I first read some references to this story, I thought certainly this was a slice of fark -- that quintessentially overstated event way-hyped by the media.

Can anyone in America explain to me how student-athlete statistics can be remotely viewed as a part of FERPA? Public institutions, public events, no way, no how private student records.

That said, here's a link to the Houston Chronicle's amazing story. The gist: looks like PO'd parent wants to rescore the high school stats; coach wants to keep his numbers from the parent.

Show of hands on the number of irate parents that have questioned your stats? Good, that's about everyone. Show of hands that think this is a legitimate legal position and/or good public relations idea? Good, there aren't any airborne digits.

Here, we have all students sign a waiver regarding their publicity info. That said, if I am to believe the lawyers who claim that we can't restrict or trademark the statistics from events -- the argument is these are facts -- how can that possibly jibe with FERPA?

Unless this gets cleared up quickly, I can see aggressive coaches and councils across the country using this as a new cudgel to batter media or fans they see as negative.

Has Talk Radio Become the Anti-Blog?

Message boards are by their very nature a negative medium. You don't take the time to sit down at the keyboard and bang out a point-by-point atta-boy post. No, you hit the keyboard when you're pissed. The positive sunshine fan turns into an acid-dripping rabid dog to rip negative folks.

Ten years ago, we were wringing our hands about the negative influence of talk radio. The reality today is there is more positive energy on the sports talk show.

Take a look at the political realm. Conservative voices dominate talk radio. For whatever reason, no one has managed to program a profitable and ratings successful liberal talk show. In the spoken word, there just doesn't seem to be a market for liberal ideology.

Before you get too upset, look at the blogosphere -- where Daily Kos, MoveOn.Org, and other liberal oriented websites hold sway. So the written word -- or better put, the multimedia word -- is a market that seems more oriented toward the liberal.

Perhaps the balance isn't within the format, but by using the format that best fits the message.

Moving Closer and Closer to a Blog World

Now that the reviews are in from the great CNN-You Tube debate, can anyone really say that the future isn't citizen media. Was it a stunt on the part of CNN? Sure, particularly the Aquaman global warming question and the great question about faith asked by a guinea pig.

But this is the thought for the day for college administrators: one of the people that will be in the race for the White House spent the evening taking questions directly from the people.

Do you?

News from the Front

The proper role of the journalist continues to evolve, and Northwestern becomes the latest battleground. It seems silly to speak of the "future of journalism" -- a field that by its very definition should be future focused. Yet, the ubiquitous iPhone is -- peel of trumphets -- changing the face of journalism forever.

Nevertheless, read the Chroncle of Higher Ed today on the changes coming in the fall curriculum at Northwestern. Heart of the story:

The most controversial change, though, is the increased emphasis on marketing. This fall, lessons in audience behavior and motivation will be taught alongside drills in crafting leads and meeting deadlines. Students will be encouraged to connect with readers by writing out of storefront newsrooms in diverse Chicago neighborhoods. Some praise the changes as long overdue; others dismiss them as a sellout.

Yeah. OK. That jingling sound? It's your cluePhone ringing. All this comes on the heels of the Wall Street Journal dust-up on the 10th anniversary of blogs and a pissing battle only an uber-geek could enjoy over who was first.

Try this angle: Martin Luther. You know, 95 Thesis. Posted on the church door, the bulletin board of its day.

Not Coming to an Arena Near You

The prohibitions on fans/media usage of new technology to capture moving images at sports facilities marches forward. For years, we have maintained a "no video" policy at venues, much to the chagrin of fans/parents/scouts, etc. Looks like we're not the only ones -- from the Wall Street Journal:

The owners can do that for a simple reason: They're owners. "It's our facility," says Karl Swanson, spokesman for the Washington Redskins, a team viewed by the press as particularly hard-line on this issue. Along with the NFL's new rules, the team will maintain its policy of not allowing print reporters to record Web video footage. The Redskins also battled with the Washington Post in 2005 after the paper twice posted about 400 photos -- about five shots per play -- in near real-time during games.

Only Two Ways to Post

For persons involved with public entities, there are two ways to engage the blogosphere. Either go under your name with full transparency, or go undercover. (OK, there is the Ostrich Strategy -- stick your head in the ground and act like those internets don't exist.)

In my humble opinion, open and honest is the only way that works. If you go subrosa, it is not if but when you get found out. Nothing good happens in that case. No Nixonian level of justification of means to ends will clean up your reputation because at the very start of whatever message you tried to carry -- it started with a lie.

You lied to the reader about your identity. It calls into question everything that follows.

As I have said many times regarding the spokesperson and the blogosphere -- you are outnumbered, out-manned and out-resourced if the blog-world decides to turn its blow torch of attention on you.

It takes considerable resources to become, as one internet security person described, a hole in the water. Good luck to those who'll try.

You've Got to be Kidding

The DC Madam's lawyer says the main reason why they have printed the phone records on line yesterday. To paraphrase, we need to use the "crowd sharing" resources of the internet to help them identify who the phone numbers belong to.

No. Really.

In a searchable database, you can check if your number (or husband's number) is in her phonebook.

Remember, that's a very near appropriation of Gannett's new "crowd sourcing" concept of putting up primary records to the blogosphere to pick apart.

"There is No Privacy in Public Anymore"

Geraldo Rivera said it tonight on FOX, and you have to agree. The quote was from the back-and-forth on Miss New Jersey.

The photos are out -- pretty tame for Facebook stuff, frankly -- and the Jersey contest people decided to let her keep her crown.

Newsday writes today another quote-fest story. The money quotes:

"This was meant to be private," the 22-year-old told NBC's "Today" show on Thursday. "It was supposed to be between my friends and I."

But even better, fellow Jersey Girl Antonella Barba -- who got whacked from American Idol for her indiscreet on-line photos:

"I used to say 'Cover your tracks,' but it really should be, 'Don't make tracks that need to be covered,"' Barba said Thursday. "Once anything is online, it's free rein."

No truer words spoken on this subject.

Another SNW Stalking Horror Story

Miss New Jersey is getting blackmailed over party-pics, supposedly taken at a Halloween party. Guess where they came from? You guessed it -- SNW.

For this blog, no surprise here. For those putting faith in SNW security -- in this case Facebook by name -- read this key passage from Newsday's story:

At least some of the photos were taken from her private Facebook page, but who did it and how have not been determined, the lawyer said. The page has since been taken offline.

It does not take a scientific rocket to figure this one out. The anonymous blackmailer? Former permissioned friend; better yet, friend of friend who copied the original digital images and shared them forward with the usual, "Hey, check this out" subject line.

One more time -- SIDs, students and student-athletes -- digital assets are extremely portable and easy to copy. Post once, view forever.

Working on to The Next Thing

This week, I'm back on the road to learn more about another item that I feel is extremely important to the SID community -- community relations and public safety. FEMA has excellent courses on public information officer -- a government designation that not only sounds like sports information director, it really is a similar task.

Currently, I'm working my way through advanced PIO, and there is tremendous things to learn both for my daily job and in the event of large scale emergency at our campus or in our community.

If you are not involved with your public service agency PIOs, you need to be. Every time there is a major sporting event on your campus, you are at risk for a major event. How will you coordinate into the new standard -- incident command -- if there is a major event?

Through the Emergency Management Institute, FEMA has several on-line courses that can give you some important starts on this area. In fact, if you are looking for a good outline for media training, the professional development course on Effective Communication is a great start. It may be cast for the public service/political sector, there are excellent drills, examples and guidelines for the sports community.

The Sound of One Hand Clapping

What's worse -- that no one posted comments from the convention notes or that no one in the organization seems to notice or care? Perhaps the third way on this one is that no one in the profession is viewing the blogworld as a part of college sports. My money is on a rude awakening for the rest of the country as the lovely "beta" testing of citizen media and Arkansas athletics rolls out nationwide.

Viva la Revolucion

The item of the day from the final sessions at San Diego was the CoSIDA business meeting as the organization votes near unanimous (or at least is seemed so) to create an executive director. The full-time position will start sometime next year.

Aside from some obvious items -- the only college group without an exec dir, most notable -- I speak from personal experience on how important the director is for the organization. When you have a good one, your board can concentrate on outreach and fundraising. When you don't, at worst all hell breaks lose; at best the board spends all its time doing nuts-and-bolts work. That's what the current CoSIDA board is spending way too much time doing.

More important, the SID's finally have their own SID -- someone who can promote the profession with the other groups.

Makes you wonder why it took so long for us to figure out that we'd never send the football head coach out to do his own general PR; that's a waste of his time.

I Believe it Translates in German . . .

Make no mistake, San Diego is my favorite SoCal town. It's filled with lots of sites, sounds and hey, when you can find Del Taco and In-and-Out drivethrus next to each other, the whole family is happy. The downtown grocery store with its own parking deck and moving sidewalks.

At the same time, today was the first time in a long time to be accosted by a street person. When I've sensed trouble in the past, I've simply tried to avoid contact. That strategy didn't work today as it only send the person off the deep end. He was still screaming at me a full city block away. It was a little creepy.

Still, San Diego and Seattle remain my best West Coast towns.

Ranly on Writing

Another CoSIDA convention day update.

Don Ranly conducts his somewhat regular writing seminar this morning, followed by a handful of table topics. The majority of today is taken up by the social activities -- golf, softball and the annual picnic. USS Midway hosts the picnic.

I'm pretty sure Ranly would find the prose here less than stunning, so we'll just leave it at that.

Let's See How Tomorrow Goes

I don’t think it’s a matter of how much push back this blog generates. Oh, I’m pretty confident that is a given from the reaction I’ve had from traditionalists. The question is just how much of a pariah I’ll become.

So colleagues, before hanging me by the thumbs from the flight deck of the Midway, consider these items:

The blog is here to stay. The media does it. Our schools do it. Myles Brand does it (via his podcast, etc). When Brand talks about creating communities and engaging people in conversations, you have to use all the tools at hand to do that. This is one of those tools.

Second, it wasn’t that long ago we had notes from these workshops handed out for members who were not around. To that extent, this will be one man’s hearing of the meeting for the benefit of those that weren’t here.

All that said, tomorrow will be scarce with less sessions and some items I need to take care of.

Afternoon with Myles

Myles Brand and Wally Renfro were an afternoon panel. I missed the lunch as mentioned earlier, but Brand spoke about integration of the athletic department into the campus. It was pretty obvious this is the new message from NCAA as it was brought home several times -- quite deftly by the two in staying on message. At first, it was a little cloying, but after time, it began to sink in how this really is a benefit to athletics. See below when the notes refer to items on coaches' salaries.

Several interesting questions from the crowd, and many of them followed the Rodney Dangerfield respect theme of past CoSIDA events. Both Brand and Renfro had some important messages to the group, and I'll focus these notes more on that mission.

The gist was: go out and work your campus, work your department, work your internal relations first before your public relations.

Some specifics, again paraphrased from their answers. Brand was the most direct with this.

Local relationships are critical that build confidence in your knowledge base and your approach. Campuses are small communities, and you need to build the relationships and the truthfulness of your perspective. Someone who understands the situations and positive solutions. It’s the local community, not pressure from a national group be it NCAA or CoSIDA.

Renfro added his perspective with:

Who is at the table when decisions are made? Someone legal and someone finance, but they are there because they bring solutions. If in our business, we are going to be engaged in a way to influence behavior is to come with solutions to problems. It’s not about promoting CoSIDA, but it’s about being prepared to bring solutions.

Here's some more that followed:

The uninformed faculty member needs context. Facts are rarely the story, context is the story. Coaches’ salaries are a major point. They are often the highest state employee in a state. Three to four dozen coaches at that level in the compensation package. Chances are on many flagship universities are many seven-figure compensation package faculty. So put the information in context, and keep athletics from being examined alone. (This may be one of the best items in the afternoon after the help-yourself advice.)

There may be faculty members who see resources to athletics are lost to academics. They may believe its a misdirection of resources. Comes back to the point of education and integration; creating some counter-pressure within the academic community to understand the role. Take the faculty senate president to lunch and find your COYA members.

Brand takes a question about what can we do to fix the lack of academic understanding. There is a gulf between athletics and academics on most campus. You won’t convince everyone, but you can reduce that large standard deviation in the middle. That has to be built on the campus. National media couldn’t do it for you, even if they agreed. The NCAA can’t do it and this organization can’t do it. It is tough work, but something only you can do on your campus.

Renfro uses a story from the Brown athletic director. When challenged on why Brown has athletics by the academic side, he reminds faculty that the Ivy League exists as a group of institutions that participate in athletics. So, Brown university professor, if athletics does not exist, you aren’t a faculty member at an Ivy League university.

There was little in the way of "news" in this (aside from some hints that the Division III split may be just around the corner -- no shock there), but it was interesting for this group to hear directly from the head of the organization not once today, but twice.

No Food For You, or Go to the Children's Table

Guess what -- no tennis shoes allowed. Hmm, even if that's what constitutes business casual at your school. CoSIDA members turned away from the luncheon today, chided and embarrassed by their colleagues.

Hey, here's a side thought -- can I chide, shame and embarrass colleagues who won't do game notes for sports that they don't think are important? Seems like a more reasonable item, but I digress.

OK, I can understand the shorts, etc., but if at my business casual includes tennis shoes. I wasn’t the one, but how demeaning for a professional at a conference to be turned away because he or she is dressed in the same manner one goes to work every day.

This is a major issue to me, because typically we don’t have a high-dress – nor do many colleges and universities. It’s the trend. Once upon a time, I was a tie and coat guy, but that’s past. Now, its more the business casual.

Let me get this straight – I can’t attend the luncheon if I went today, but other people wearing flip-flops or shorts can because they were female?

My ties are reserved for funerals – maybe that’s what’s going on with our group when we are so overly obsessed at a luncheon or session about dress. Lord knows, I’ve seen some extremely well dressed individuals stand up and speak and you know – they were much better off when they didn’t.

This one fellow I encountered who was turned away at the door had far more on the ball and a better grasp of the profession than some of the nattily attired.

For those scoring at home, no, I didn't get turned away because I was taking lunch to run my wife and kids to get something to eat. That's another thing -- don't bring your kids to lunch because A) they won't like it, B) they'll squirm and C) we've taken to "locking" the doors to keep people from dining and dashing before the program. And, we wonder why only 14 spouse/kid tickets were taken for the convention.

Session Two -- Oops on the Battery

Ah, the vagarities of battery life, plus a dash to ask some follow-ups finds my laptop buried against the wall. See the big difference actually having the keyboard on this next area. Best I’ve got are the snippets, but they’re quality.

First of all, since I am writing in short sentences – perhaps even unrefined sentences – this is not real writing. It’s an unrefined column, as one of the media said. News flash – this is one of your main sources covering sports. Get over the loathing and accept it.

Gene Stallings controlled the negativity in his program – now this is one that I want to develop further later, because it hits so close to how I’ve perceived the role of PR to be. Look, when the representative of a certain city yesterday could not say the word “hurricane”, you’re getting nothing but sunshine pumped up your rear and guess what – you’re not very effective if you can’t engage. The one thing I’ve seen lately from the mainstream, that citizen sports journalists are engaging in Rovian tactics (that is, hitting the strength) well, if you confront your problems you have a better job of changing people’s minds rather than just letting them fester.

The difference for the citizen journalist in the area of sports is that he’s not covering a sport, he’s a fan. That’s a paraphrase, but it is extremely on point. The fanaticism that comes from blind attack on a single issue can be found in partisan politics. My position: consider your working with Senator Jones, not Coach Jones, particularly if you are in a public institution.

“I read them (message boards) and anyone who says they don’t is a liar.” Thank you, media panel member. Thank you for saying what is really going on.

Real issue with access and the pizza guy – bigger thing is booster that provides it. Coaches are locking out the media who may at least give some perspective, and the people posting on blogs and message boards are these coaches' would-be friends. The media panel is very passionate -- and this syncs up with the one in Destin at the SEC -- about getting into practice.

One brings it home: We’ll write the story without the coach, his only chance is to be involved in the story.

Good stuff and food for thought

Session One -- TV Media

The two words won’t change – access and information. The way you get it is changing, but that basic value is not.

It’s good to know that the person at the top of the chain gets the essential nature of the popularity of athletics. Craig Silver of CBS makes it very clear to the room. It’s about talking to the people. Reading the media guide.

“We need access” – coaches don’t see that and they want broadcasters to pitch their message. Not their job. Can’t shy away from off-the-field issues, but when the difficult situation arises how does it affect the competition on the field today.

Silver brings home a very important point – paper is still extremely important for the most advanced technology in TV. He’s making the same plea he made at SECs last couple of years. Nice new twist – can’t read your website on the airplane.

Comes back around to the idea he wants to know it all, particularly the clips, to understand all the angles, including the bad news.

Patrick Donaher with CSTV People watching in 10-15 minute spurts and he’s worried that people aren’t getting the story. He’s suggesting a link on the website that breaks down the team’s schedule during the week, so they will know when to mesh. Some technical ideas are good, the schematics of an arena, the kind of power at the arena, the hotels, the support list of names and digits. OK – good stuff but I don’t think we’re going to post a Facebook-like class schedule for everyone to follow.

ESPNU’s Ashley O’Connor carping about the quality of the stats persons – point taken but a factor within that is having producers that will not abuse the stat people. On the one hand, the money can be worth it – when you get it two to three months later. Two way street.

Technology and efficiency are pushing the coverage of more and more events during the course of the weekend.

Minimizing non-revenue seating. Silver is encouraging AD to get with the television partners and avoid the reduction of the ability to produce live events. “Those decisions effect our decisions.” Donaher says the “clean slate” venue is going to cost more to produce, and hints that it may effect decisions on programming.

Silver brings back up one of his lines – it’s about name on the front, not the name on the back (hey, did he read our 2006 press guide?) – in speaking about the fact that passion is the difference in college sports. Silver speaks with great fervor; you can see his passion, about this being the heart, the source of power in the brand.

Let's Celebrate the Centennial

OK fellow CoSIDAns, here's the 100th post and it will issue in a convention blog.

9:07
First thing today – is this the only laptop in the room? At least the only visible one. I’ll start with some inside baseball notes from the chatter of the first day. Plus, the wireless is not available in the meeting rooms

Paper Thinking

All the early talk about the NCAA blogging case seems to focus on the credentials. Not to say that’s not important, there is only so much space in a press box. However, to think we’ll win the day with bloggers by restricting access is to misunderstand – tragically in most cases – the essential milieu of the blog.

If we focus only on access, this drives them outside the press box. This will separate the determined from the poser. That may not be good, particularly if the passion is counter to your program.

Let’s call it the Rather Effect: there are more of them than you, and if you wind up to take on the internet, better have a case of Mountain Dew and a freezer full of Hot Pockets.

With CSTV owning StatCrew, what guarantees will the non-CSTV groups have regarding internal hooks in the program? From the NCAA and league’s essentially creating a monopoly for StatCrew, it adds another level of concern for those not with CSTV.

Coronado -- Beach Trifecta

Not many years you can dip a toe in the three major beaches -- Destin, O'ahu and now the Coronado. For all the downside in this job, there is the occasional positive, particularly when you are a travel freak.

That said, MLS is going to need to go a lot farther to make its product palatable. Home Depot Center is grabbing $15 for parking and I want a heck of a lot more control, better quality soccer than that. At least at Truman Sports Complex, they get it and have free parking for KC Wizards. I was stunned that the parking cost more than my GA ticket for Chivas.

Let me add, HDC's pitch isn't going to be up to David Beckham's standards with a gigantic pair of gashes across the entire surface. Right inside the box. Unbelievable. Kudos to Kevin Jones at Arkansas because the Lady'Back pitch would never, ever look as uneven, scared and ratty.

The Answer is Ipswitch

For the CoSIDA folks -- little test to see how many of you are reading:

The face-to-face codeword: Ipswitch.

Travel Hell

Nothing quite like a good midwestern storm system to jack up the airlines. What should have been a nice, one-connection, five-hour flight to San Diego became a 19-hour See America slice of Hell. Kudos to Wendy at XNA for at least achieving a set of flights out and for the gate agent at Sky Harbor who helped with a seat issue. For the rest -- from customer service to TSA to O'Hare gate agents -- I hope you get a nice cot to sleep on during your next stranding and don't get treated the way you treated our group.

Hard to know where to start, but here's a couple of highlights:
Don't trust American Airlines' customer rebooking at O'Hare. They assured me that we were priority waitlisted for a direct flight to SD that would have sliced our day in half. What they didn't know is my travel agent's ju-ju is stronger than theirs, and I knew they had not even waitlisted us -- only some weakassed "designated preference" that did not show up.

At the gate, when asked if we were on the waitlist, her attitude filled answer was "Not on my flight!" This was before I let her know about rebook. Then it became, "Well, you'll be 86-87-88 and 89." That's when I figured out there was no need to expend anymore of my life at her gate.

Speaking of gates, I have never, EVER, had a trip in which every single gate changed -- departure and arrivals. Even when I finally reached SD on US Air, there was a plane sitting in our gate and we had to wait. Guess what airline -- that's right, American.

There's much more fun to come, but now it's time for the CoSIDA convention. Site selection is first up on Saturday.

The Facebook-MySpace Divide?

Huh?

Some new theories about rough stereotypes between Facebook and MySpace are floating around. The gist of it -- Facebook is for the good kids and MySpace is for the fringe kids.

Read more for you own here, but here's what I know from our own athletes -- that's pure manure. About 40% of our women's athletes have MySpace to go with their Facebook (which is about 95% usage). Of those, there just doesn't seem to be the correlation to the stereotypes.

This overlooks a really obvious point: You didn't have a Facebook account until the last six to nine months unless you were in college. Hello. Duh. Big Red Truck. Do you reckon that skews the "stereotype"?

Come back to me with this in a year after the two have duked it out on even ground. The same artistic type, cast as subaltern in this survey, probably was drawn to MySpace as much by the toolset that fostered the creative side -- layout, music, video integrations. Frankly, that what I find in the college community -- Facebook is your organizer, mailbox and social contact platform; MySpace is where your personality comes out. Once we have had that time with both more open enrollment (I'll give credit that at least the fact they are both open now was considered, but not given a lot of weight in the study) and Facebook continues to open up the template, I might buy the argument then.

When Does a Blogger Violate Rights Agreements?

The NCAA and the Louisville Courier-Journal have set off a new round of a debate going on for some time -- who has the right to create live data from events. The NBA, NFL, MLB and PGA have all had swings at this, looks like the NCAA will now be up to bat. It's a mixed bag on legal results, and the opinions are all over the place. A great primer from the legal side can be found at Wendy Seltzer's blog.

Within all of this are two missed points. First, who "owns" the right to distribute the official statistics. Most of the debate has centered on this -- you're dealing with reporting of facts from a public location, etc. -- and looped this into the "third" rights agreement: video, audio and now data. Here is where a lot of the heat is generated because the reporters for newspapers (frankly, in an attempt to breath life into the static nature of the medium) are getting busted regularly for transmitting play-by-play. Very few people have issue with commentary on the event, but the attempt to circumvent the LiveTracker is the issue.

Frankly, one major sports network poaches StatCrew and other data streams with impunity for its aggregate live stat pages. Even has a whole division dedicated to stealing this information.

What I think is vastly more important is the creative work nature of the official stats. Many people -- Ms. Seltzer, notably in a personal sidebar -- don't recognize that live statistics streams aren't generic facts. They are the exact same thing as a television broadcast or a radio call -- the creative work of trained professionals and recorded in real time. That's the key definition given to why you can exclude other TV or radio stations from live coverage.

Before you pooh-pooh my argument, consider this -- only one person determines hit or error in baseball, the official scorer. Only one group of people can bestow the blocked shot, assist, steal or turnover in basketball, the official stat crew. Those are subjective items, and believe me, from listening to uneducated opinions of TV producers I can fully attest to this as fact (how can you say that wasn't a block? well, if you get the ball stripped below your waste, that's a steal -- regardless of how much the player flailed their arms in an attempt to draw a shooting foul).

Curious for feed back on that angle.

Field Day 2007

And now, for something completely different. Those who've paid attention to the bio know that amateur radio is a big part of things for me and a major volunteer effort. This weekend I'll close our vacation with the annual Field Day operation.

If you aren't up on what it is, I highly encourage you to go out into your local community and find the people who are running this nationwide drill. Ham radio folks are manning their stations for 24-hours straight, working in shifts to simulate a huge event and working off the grid. No commercial power for most, no premade super-duper antennas. They are, as the name implies, working in the field.

Our county -- Washington -- will have three organized FD operations: one at the University, one a combination of two local clubs and the last at the county emergency operations center. For years, I ran the overnight for the University -- the adult keeping up on the kids -- but this year for the first time I'll overnight at the EOC to help them through their first full-up 24-hour run.

You can learn more about what ham radio means in an emergency or about the national organization, ARRL.

'Til a blurry Sunday afternoon, 73s de K1ARK at WC5AR.

Few Wrecks Will Give You Religion

Hope everyone enjoyed the posts on the Citizen Media. That ran during my vacation to Florida, with some to come on that score as well.

Notable off the top was how a 13-hour drive became 16 hours after four very tragic wrecks along the highways from Fayetteville to Florida. It was after the second one -- a one-hour parking lot outside of Hattiesburg -- that my wife turned to me and said, you know, we probably shouldn't be upset about being delayed. That could have been us.

Creepy. But who knows.

At the End of the Day, Its About Time and Space

This is a truncated edition of the longer timeline within the Destin presentation:
Susie Gardner resigned at Arkansas as the women's basketball head coach. She made her intentions known to our AD back in Fayetteville in the middle of the afternoon on a Friday. Her hope was the news could be held through the weekend, perhaps with an official release on Monday. My bad news for her was I doubted it would make it until the 10 o'clock news. Little did I realize that I missed the target by four hours.
The moment the team meeting broke up at 4:30 p.m., we were on the clock but even I was shocked by the speed at which the news traveled. Team texting got the ball rolling. The media was on it within an hour and by 6:30 p.m. it was all over.
The news traveled through the Atlanta-based SEC women's tournament as quickly as if the games were being played at Walton Arena. For the sports information office, the rise of 3G phones and rampant texting have ushered in an era not seen since the turn of the century -- the 20th, that is.
When the telephone and telegraph reduced time and space, compressing a world that previously was dominated by the letter and the pony express, society was changed in profound ways. For the most part, it stayed that way for the next century. Think about it, until the last five years, the instantaneous nature of media still took some time. OK, that's quite redundant, but consider the case of Susie Gardner.
Five, ten years ago, that news from the meeting would be relayed to parents and friends by phone. There was a good likelihood that the land-line called had no one home, maybe a message left on a machine. The long-distance costs would make some think twice about calling more than the closest friend or family member. Fans at a distant tournament a whole time-zone away would have never gotten the call -- except maybe to their hotel rooms, but almost certainly not to the arena.
Media members that were stretched out across two states and separated by another two would have waited for a fax, maybe an email, of the official press release. They would not have felt the need to hurry, who was going to beat them to the public with the information anyway.
Distant fans or fellow coaches wouldn't learn about the decision for days, maybe weeks, until they picked up the gossip from a colleague that may have seen that fateful transaction in the sports agate: ARKANSAS -- Announced resignation of women's basketball coach Susie Gardner.
The moral of the story? The moment a decision is made, and more than two people know the outcome, you are already out of time to react.
If you're in the business and want the full presentation, give me an email at the office.

Hyper-Local Journalism

Topix is a localized news aggregator that sells advertising and is actively seeking volunteers in every town to serve as volunteer reporters and editors. The company rebuilt and rebranded its internet search engine concept to refocus on the local. Topix combines local bloggers with thousands of traditional news stories and public relations press releases and generates news based on the zip code of the user. Think Rivals with AP stories and town meeting coverage.
Now, here’s the catch: who are the investors in Topix? Gannett, McClatchy and Tribune corporations, to the tune of a $15 million financial commitment last fall. The leadership group – filled with former Google executives – sank $1 million alone in the purchase of the topix.com domain.
And how do I know this stuff about Topix? From an industry blogger at ZDNet.com, but most important, from the blog of the company director, Rich Skrenta, who’s latest post is famously titled: “What do you do when your success . . . sucks?”
Skrenta has latched onto ultra-local news based on his belief that we are craving for wanting
to know what’s going on in the neighborhood, not just the town -- thus the zip code base for your topix.com page. The first topix launch (leading to the aforementioned commentary)
put too much faith in the ability to aggregate what was already available. They quickly discovered that more correspondents and editors were needed -- thus the volunteers. This transitions from a “read only” newspaper into something more interesting in Skrenta’s opinion.
People know to not blindly trust online ‘like they did the newspaper 20 years ago,” Skrenta recently said. There is a desire for more commentary and more detail. One result: Gannett papers linking directly to Topix pages.
So the question is -- how long until your zip-coded Topix page has a sports editor? Not very darn long. Remember, there are three things that drive the internet: PSP -- Politics, Sports and Porn.

Is Citizen Journalism the New Facebook?

Internet trends come and go faster than one-hit-wonder music acts. Three years ago, no one in the athletic community was terribly concerned about this thing called Facebook. Last year, it was all that anyone wanted to talk about. Why is Citizen Media not another fad? For the same reason talk radio is not a fad – money.
In an effort to find a mechanism to “pay for the journalism we need,” the Knight Foundation
awarded $5 million in direct grants to create support systems for Citizen Media, ranging from the Center for Citizen Media at Cal-Berkeley to the Citizen Media Law Project at the Harvard Law School. Notably, the goal of the Citizen Media Law Project is to provide resources “including a legal guide that will cover everything from how to form a business to how to use freedom of information and open meetings laws to get access to information, meetings, and governmental records, as well as other legal subjects such as risks associated with online publication.” Another $5 million in direct grants to blog operators is set for 2007.

Al Gore Invented More than the Internet

Whenever doubt about a trend is expressed, check its validity by seeing if the Democratic National Committee or the Republican National Committee employs the tool or tactic. The 2004 presidential race saw the rise of the blogger – both paid and partisan – and the 2008 campaign is primed to see New Media as the centerpiece, not the sideshow. How are the candidates managing message? Blogging. How are the new proposals floated? Message boards. How is the buzz created? Social networking.
Taking another page from the government side, the Federal Emergency Management Administration offers training courses in emergency response. The majority of these courses are free, on-line training. There are two courses that relate to the SID – basic and intermediate public information officer, or PIO. Both stress the role of the PIO as an internal investigator, gathering from the individuals involved the key facts and how those details are marshaled for use in a crisis situation. The strategies contained in the PIO courses are very useful for our field. (As an aside, if there is an emergency of significance at one of your venues, your university
will find itself operating within the federally-mandated Incident Command System – the athletic department administration would be well served by its decision-makers taking the basic courses.)

What Happened to Winning the Hearts and Minds?

This is part four from the Destin presentation:

Trying to woo the support of the people during a time of crisis should be the hallmark of any public relations professional. Cynical as it may appear, the goal is to gain the support of as many people as possible. It is no different for a basketball coach or a presidential candidate. Granted, Lyndon Johnson gave the phrase a bad name through a series of extraordinarily bad military tactics in Vietnam, and it continues to this day through the current administration’s
attempts in the Middle East. John Adams said it best when he wrote in 1818 that the Revolutionary War was won before it started because it was “in the minds and hearts of the people.”
But how can that be achieved for the athletic department? Start by engaging the fan base. Jesus said go to where the sinners are, and if there are issues of rumor and innuendo within a segment of the fan base, they need to be engaged.
The fear is that by stepping into the chat room or the blogosphere, this is legitimizing the accusations and commentary in those areas.
Let’s pause and consider the previous section regarding the media’s use of the internet as the digital street to gather public opinion. How many phone calls do you receive right now from traditional media who apologize for needing to check out something they heard on talk radio or saw on the message boards? They are already giving credence to the boards.
Both sides of this engagement – the media member and the SID – agree that the vast majority of what is out there is baseless. As a result, your explanation ends the potential story in the traditional media, and the job of the public relations professional is done. Unfortunately,
the problem is your answer to the media person is not being reflected back to the message board. This allows the issue to persist, and perhaps grow.
Take a page from the service industry. Those comment feedback areas and ratings on travel websites are shown to have a huge impact on hotel decisions. As a result, hotels are paying individuals to pose as guests and write positive comments. Hardly ethical, but ruthlessly effective. In addition, there are public relations firms created for the purpose of reputation managment -- positive web comments and other needs on-line.

This is Asymmetrical Warfare

Part three from the presentation at Destin:
Like it or not, the intercollegiate athletic department is the slow-moving, traditionalist target of the Citizen Journalist. Individuals with agendas can make hit-and-run operations against the institution with great ease. Rarely are the wounds significant. Most of the time, they are the small cuts that over time become the death of a thousand blows.

Turning the considerable power of the athletic department against the Citizen Media at best results in driving the individuals underground to gather themselves. At worst, it makes them heroes or maytrs and brings more people to the cause.

If the terms sound ominously like those used by the Bush Administration in the war on terror, it is because this is. The Citizen Journalist is a committed partisan who believes in the cause and is righteous in the fight against wrong-doing. Threats of lawsuits and attacks upon the character resulting in equally overzealous supporters making counter threats against life and limb only serve to ratchet up the battle.

But what can a coach, a university, an athletic department do when they have tangible assets at risk and the person making the attack -- in comparison -- has virtually none? What is served when a million-dollar coach sues a mid-level wage slave with zero assets, a huge mortgage and five-digit credit card debt? That's the point, the very unfortunate point.

We Interupt this Blog Already in Progress

Taking a quick break from the parceling out of the Destin presentation to interject these two breaking stories. First, the NCAA takes a stand against active blogging during the College World Series. Check out the controversy at the Louisville Courier-Journal story.

There's a fine line here. Our position has been the transactions of the game, the data stream of statistics, is a protected right just like the audio and video representations of the game. We would have done the same if the person was doing live play-by-play. My question would be, is the reporter giving random thoughts about the game and post-action comments about events.

Not knowing the details, you've got to read this one and make your own judgment.

Baseball (and softball and track) are extremely well suited for bloggers. Lots of time between significant events. Even enough time for a quick typist to transcribe the whole event. That's the rub you don't see often in basketball (too fast without a stat program for coherent play-by-play posting) and football.

Second issue is the growing number of MLB stadiums that are following the example of NFL and NBA and removing prime seats for media and giving it to big ticket "boosters". It's moving to the colleges as well. This is a New York Times article by Richard Sandomir on June 11 -- so you'll have to have a subscription for that one. Obviously, the owners have calculated that having the favor of the media isn't worth the money of the skybox.

Now, put A+B. The C is this: what happens when the citizen journalist sits in the stands and blogs away about the game, covering it without the threat of losing a credential. Sure, the citizen may or may not get to ask post-event questions at the press conference, but they can get quotes from various live streams, podcasts and regular media just fine. Their goal is interpretation anyway, or different angles (for example, a hometown story about Joe Blow written by someone from his back-home Topix netitor.)

As they say, developing . . . .

MIDDAY UPDATE: Check these notes at the Center for Citizen Media and Poynter Institute. Folks, as sure as I said Facebook was your problem two years ago, YouTube last year, this is the new wave -- ride it or get crushed when it breaks on your shoals.

You are Outnumbered

This is part two of the Destin presentation:
The San Francisco Chronicle announced the cutback of 25% of its editorial staff at the end of May. Why? Profits for the company are the top reason, but how will the Chronicle continue to cover its city? They will employ more and more internet copy and information.

As one of the vice presidents of Gannett Corporation recently said, “If you have people in the community commenting or uncovering things that you didn’t find, we have found that we are getting a lot more depth to our investigative coverage because of that.” Their new mode of “citizen journalism” makes documents and raw data available for readers to pour over details and help the newsroom. Another term used by Gannett exec Michael Manness was “crowd-sourcing,” and extolled the virtue to turning over tools previously only available to the traditional journalist working in the office.

In the past, a newspaper required many reporters to perform the task of gathering news. To get a scoop, the reporter had to know which sources to talk to, where to find those sources and how to verify their information. This was time and space consuming. The reporter had to know the right barber shop, the right coffee shop, the right break room; and he had to be at that physical place at the right time.

The message boards speed and simply that process of gathering the gossip. A reporter can be anywhere, and look up any information that was posted over the past time frame. One need not worry about missing the equipment manager at 8:15 in the morning at the donut shop. The information is waiting to be found.

When more depth is required, a dedicated blogger will provide the road map to any controversial situation. From the television network news operations all the way down to the local newspaper, the paid media are accessing the volunteer media to take the gossip item found in the message board into an investigative piece.

Thus the internet becomes the “force multiplier” of the media. Dan Gilmor, director of the Center for Citizen Media at the University of California said it best. “We can put more people against any story than any organization could,” said during a radio interview. “We’ve got 1.6 million people participating on our site.”

As the spokesperson for the department, the SID finds himself a lone voice, and one that is typically only speaking to and through the traditional media. Is it a surprise that the media increasingly pays more attention, puts more weight, on the other side of the story? There are more people expressing it from multiple angles and in multiple formats.

Rise of the Citizen Journalist

Parsing it out in small doses, here's the first part of the presentation in Destin to the SEC SID meeting:
The question rapidly becomes what is a journalist? These are times not unlike the late 19th Century and the mid-20th Century when the institution itself is undergoing fundamental change. The Muckrackers and the New Journalism movements were paradigm shifts driven by societal and technological change. To simply point at the broader usage of the internet and computers as the sole cause of the rise of Citizen Journalism is to overlook a shift in the way consumers seek information. Research from the Pew Trust this past year indicates that a “digital divide” remains, and in many ways is widening, between those who receive information
by new media and by traditional means. The divide isn’t economic, it is social. More broadband, cheaper computers, easier access are not likely to bridge the chasm.

Throughout modern history, man has sought information, and has tried to achieve the truth from the source. The majority operates under the assumption there is one truth, but increasingly we find the public willing to entertain competing realities. Surveys find that younger audiences seek a multitude of opinion. They prefer the straight news story followed by open commentary that mixes both sides.

Why would a consumer want to see the rambling attacks of partisans along with the facts? The generation that was raised doubting government, putting its faith in the Watergate-era investigative journalism, has given way to a generation that almost automatically doubts the newspaper. Where in the past serving as the ombudsman of the public interest was a virtue, the core belief is the media is holding back information.

With younger readers having an expectation of differing opinions, what are the tasks for the public relations office? First and foremost, the SID must engage the new media, and do so on its own turf. This means participation in commentary, creation of Citizen Journalist networks, formulation of critical messages, and the collection of information from all points of view for the consideration of decision-makers.

My Spidey Sense Was Tingling

Continuing the line of "I'm not insane for interacting with the boards," this validation arrives from not exactly the most scholarly of sources -- Entertainment Weekly. The story was a couple of issues old, sitting on the reception coffee table at the optometrist. Joshua Rich writes about the way Sony execs brought in the fan websites and boards to build buzz for Spider-Man 3. Quoting one of the Sony division presidents, "It's a tightrope act." The director wasn't really thrilled about parts of his movie appearing on-line and on TV but Sam Raimi says,''It's the world we live in. I just have to adapt.''

There's a refreshing point of view. The article continues to note how other studios are working out how they may interact with internet buzz, and are ever mindful that the web can kill a movie -- citing Catwoman. Um, I've seen Catwoman. The early griping on line wasn't responsible for that.

If you want to read the EW piece.

Rudy Would Approve

This came to me on the flight home from the SEC Spring Meetings. I was mulling the reaction of a couple of colleagues about how much I engaged the new media -- read, message boards and bloggers -- to work on keeping the Lady Razorbacks information correct. I had said at the meeting that I'd rather deal with correcting errors at a level below the traditional media. Right now, a lot of the work in the rumor mill is being done for the traditional media on the boards. They don't like to admit it, but the message boards are a force multiplier for their newsroom. More on that later.

For the traditionalist SIDs out there, try wrapping your minds around this analogy. Open posting on the boards to correct factual errors -- this is the limit of my work there -- or to promote events is the same as the "broken windowpane" policing Rudy Guliani did in New York City. If you don't do something about the broke windows, Rudy says, eventually you'll have so many broken windows in your building that the building may come down. So, he spent a considerable amount of effort on cleaning up the streets and low-level crime. It resulted in an overall lowering of the crime rate during his years as mayor.

People argue with lots of things Rudy did, but he did turn around Times Square.

So, ask yourself -- will your citizen media get out of control if you don't make some attempt to interact with them? You're not going to change their opinions, but the majority -- like most reasonable people -- are open-minded when it comes to getting the record straight.

SNW Leads to NCAA Secondary

Just for those who might try to cut around the new recruiting rules, word out from some highly redacted self-reported NCAA secondary violations that one school has turned itself in for improper booster contact. The booster had gone to a SNW and tried to chat up a recruit about how that person should come to booster's school.

Before anyone gets FOI crazy -- no, I don't know the school name, sport or even which SNW the event happened on. Remember, I said it was highly redacted.

The point is NCAA rules follow you into Second Life -- so, no creating of recruiter avitars either.

You Do WHAT?

OK, the most interesting reaction in the room to all the aggressive SNW related items at the SEC meetings was when I said, why yes, I often post on message boards. Under my name. Representing the University.

I'd say a majority thought it was understandable once I explained our policy -- not to challenge opinion and only to correct obvious factual errors -- but a couple was flabbergasted. I don't think they'll be any dinner invitations from them.

It took a while to remember a good example of when I used these direct posts, then it hit me a little late -- several times there were bogus press conferences supposedly set to deal with various untrue events. I'd help shut down those threads by the simple confirmation that there was no press conference set for X time or X day.

I realize its a bit different, but here's my best analogy. Back in the early 1990s, there was this thing called talk radio. Lots of SIDs would never call in -- don't want to legitimize that medium. Over time that changed, and here was the point. If today you heard something that was clearly in error -- there is no press conference today, the tipoff is 6 p.m., the network for the game is ESPN -- on a talk show, you would pick up the phone and call to get that corrected.

Search and replace the words "talk show" with "message board" -- tell me, what's the difference?

More to come over the next few days as I'll post bits and pieces from my presentation at the SEC SID meeting for those curious.

Public Spokesman Oops

Former President Jimmy Carter breaks one of the great unspoken rules of ex-presidenting -- you don't call out the other members of the club. These days, everyone is welcome to an opinion, but for heaven's sake, man up about it.

For those that missed it, Carter said the current Bush is the worst all-time on foreign policy.

Today, we learn from Mr. Carter that he says his remark was "careless or misinterpreted."

Please. Pick one. Either you were careless -- as in "did I say that out loud in front of a reporter" -- or you were taken out of context and misunderstood.

Let me think for a minute. Reporter. Talking with Ex-POTUS. Tape recorder? Yeah, I'd say legal counsel recommends that -- maybe even on both ends of the conversation.

Gonna have a hard time with the misunderstood option.

Who's Laughing Now?

Another one of those SNW oops -- Dennis Seavers is the executive director of the Arizona state fingerprinting board. He also had -- I'll assume the past tense -- a MySpace page. Got some 'splainin to do today after he said that he was a Big Brother volunteer to expose children to the "splendors of lawlessness." OK, cute joke. Not that different from the current Big Brother/Big Sister national PSA campaign that stresses you don't have to be a saint to be a Big. You've heard them; you're qualified to be a Big if you ever shot a spit ball, every gave someone a noogie, etc.

Regrettably for Mr. Seavers, he works essentially in law enforcement. Famous for not having a sense of humor. Made a comment about kids. Parent groups are equally famous for not having a sense of humor regarding adults interacting with kids.

I did not learn about Mr. Seavers from his MySpace, or some blog. Nope. Ye olde fashioned way from Associated Press and a front page (just below the fold) note listed on today's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette.

Reckon that's going to follow around his resume?

You Can't Save Them All

One of the not-so-funny numerous moments from the FEMA public information officer training was the title of this entry. It was the answer given by a flustered PIO in a mock disaster interview. When asked about those people over there who were injured and killed, the PIO shrugged and said, "You can't save them all." Oops.

Why is that in the SNW/SID blog? Learned the other day about one of our former athletes who hasn't exactly had a positive time since she departed UA. Two DUIs among other things. One of the flags here of this future behavior was her Facebook, a classic college party log with the usual entries and images. It wasn't the only indicator she needed some guidance, and it didn't lead to her transfer.

The update on her life reminded me of a few other persons whose dramatic SNW entries were precursors of serious issues or departure from college. More than a few universities legal departments are advising that if the school monitors SNW, they are opening themselves up to tremendous liability for A) spying -- ok, that's not the legalese they'd use; or B) liability for not taking action in each and every case.

As a result, many are now taking an enlightened blind eye toward SNW. They're adults. It's their life. They deserve privacy. When did the college abdicate responsibility for assisting with the mentoring/parenting/raising of our youth? Probably about the same time the high schools stopped.

Before the clucking starts, would you turn a blind eye toward a friend's destructive behavior? Would you ignore your own child's issues? Well, maybe if you were doing drugs with your kids -- but that's another story.

In the end, you really can't save them all. But you can try.

Internet as Media Force Multiplier

One of the fav terms in mil-speak these days is a force multiplier. Roughly speaking, something that adds a dramatic strength to your military combat effectiveness. If your side has an air force and the other side doesn't, it makes it really easy to pick off the tanks and roll through to the objective.

Thinking about the internet and scouting out areas for discussion at the upcoming SEC meetings, it occurs to me that the real impact of this second generation of internet is to act as the media's greatest force multiplier. A lot of times we think in terms of what the media knows and how it comes to know it. Great focus has gone toward finding websites (Deadspin or BadJocks, for example) or SNW tools (Facebook or MySpace). This is a mistake.

Two fronts here. First, not unlike the internet itself, there's no way you can keep a handle on every corner of the web. You'll always miss something, some new site, some updated tool -- it's a losing battle.

The second front is more significant. Time is a commodity for the media -- always has been, always will be. The fixed points are the most obvious. The looming line for some media, something that becomes more artificial as the days pass and the media morphs. The for information that is fresh to fill the 24/7/365 void of news-tainment. How can media people solve those problems in the days in which budgets are dropping, staff is falling, costs are rising but the demand for more -- and different -- information grows?

Google. Message boards. Bloggers.

More and more sports stories include quotes from people that were considered "off-limits" in the past. Recent examples? The sudden departure of the Georgia women's golf coach -- no quotes in the Atlanta Journal-Constitution from official University sources, nothing from the coach, nothing from the players. But AJC did have quote from a player's father. At LSU, in the days immediately after the Chatman resignation we saw quotes from her coffee shop owner, friends and family. In Arkansas' own men's basketball coach departure-hire-departure-hire, one player mother became a fav quote.

How did they find them? Google up their names, addresses and phone numbers in five minutes, something that would have required hours or days in the past and perhaps considerable cost. How did they know where to look? A run through the message boards, which despite everyone's attempt at pooh-poohing away are as full gold nuggets as Sutter's stream. Sit on-line and sift the silt from the ore. Want to get the flavor of the event? Find the blogger who's already done some of your background work.

Are any of these things new? Not no, but hell no. It just took lots and lots of time and usually the event passed without the ability to dig in. Find the parent? Had to hope you already had the name and hometown, and the local library had the phone book. Get the ors? Took a lot of folks in a lot of donut shops and barber's chairs.

Given a new road map courtesy of the net, the reporter can now try to sort out the true and false by peppering the source with items that might start the process closer to the target than the wide-open and vague, so what happened?

I run through this to bring out a couple of points. Don't believe you can control the message completely. There will always be a counter, or someone off the campus. You can navigate and try to maintain a message, but be ready for the rough spots. The other is both simple and sinister: you better know the truth and rely on it. Sometimes knowing what really happened isn't possible, particularly to the spokesperson. This is dangerous for all parties, but a reality because the individuals involved for their own agendas will not be forthcoming.

There is the possibility -- not very viable, but possible -- that Muhammed Saeed al-Sahaf, the Iraqi Minister of Information did not know that the U.S. troops were at the Baghdad airport. His own people just might have been not forthcoming with the intelligence. More likely is the sad SOB was sent out to try and mislead. As Dr. Phil would say, how did that work out for you, Muhammed?

SNW is Out for NCAA Recruiting Process

For all those following the NCAA text messaging ban to recruits, notice this interesting twist in the language passed. It detailed what was permissible, not what was impermissible. In the NCAA world, that means you may only do what's listed -- no creativity allowed.

Why is that important? Because the only allowed communication with recruits are phone calls and emails. All other electronic means are out. So much for that Facebook page.

More on the UWD SNW ban for athletes

Media accounts you might be interested in. This link is from the Univ. of Minnesota student newspaper, who has some a few stories about SNW over the past year.

UMD athletes won't be "poking" anymore

You might recognize one of the commentators' names.

Can You Write Shoot in a Crowded Campus?

Here's the latest in students and SNW -- student at small Iowa college gets expelled for writing that he wanted to shoot some folks on campus. Of course, he did it on facebook. It will eventually become the next first amendment case.

More important, in the coverage of this event bubbled up this very useful fourth amendment related legal citation. It comes from Matthew Hodge at the Friends: Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services blog, complete with links to the full opinions. The quick gist is there may be some issues regarding fourth amendment privacy and how it is or is not enabled on a particular SNW.

Friends:Social Networking Sites for Engaged Library Services: The Fourth Amendment and Facebook Privacy

Are You Sure That's a Ban?

Over the past couple of weeks, my inbox and voice mail has been peppered by media from the Minnesota area about a ban on SNW for University of Minnesota-Duluth athletes. Granted, I'm working off internet postings, but from one quote I've read of the UMD code of conduct, that's not a ban. Is it limiting the free speech of the athletes? Well, if having full license to rip your teammates on-line or posting photos of your beer-bong parties with underage teammates is limiting free speech -- yes.

As I've said repeatedly, student-athletes are public figures within their communities, and now with broader access to the world via the internet, at least minor public figures on the grand scale. College athletics is not a right; it's a privilege. A university has the right to defend it's good name and public image when those representing the university injure it.

Help me out here Corporate America -- what happens to the employee who blogs negatively about the company? It's a hard lesson learned, and better learned in school.

You might have a bumper sticker on your car that says something lewd. Doesn't mean it won't get you in trouble with the boss when you drive it to work. At the end of the day, remember you own the car -- and the right to free expression on it -- but your boss owns your job.

At the risk of sounding drudgish -- developing.

Learn from Everyone

Last Friday, the UofA welcomed a new director for its oral history center. Being the history geek, of course I dropped by the reception. Former US senator David Pryor is the money and force behind the center, and he gave some brief comments.

What you might ask can a senator do to help sports information? He told the story of why he and his wife decided that Arkansas needed a center for oral history. They attended the opening of a colleagues' papers at a neighboring state's flagship university library. Impressed with what they saw, they began to wonder what could be done in Arkansas.

The kicker, however, was why they wanted to do it. Stop me if this sounds familiar, but Arkansas has a huge inferiority complex. Some of it deserved. But the Pryors realized that as long as outsiders were defining the state, it was always remain some haven for the Dogpatch-cum-trailer park mystique.

To paraphrase, it was at that point David Pryor realized that unless he did something to let Arkansans tell their story in their own words, who would? If he didn't give voice to the good things about Arkansas, how could we expect to change the state's image?

Smack between the eyes. So, if you're tired of what's being said about your school, your coach, yourself on the internet, until you are willing to tell your own story -- the good stories -- why are you thinking it will somehow get better on its own.

Go forth and tell your good stories.

The New Athletic Department Job

Working through some technology contracts the past couple of weeks, it's becoming clear that the new job for athletic departments may be a CIO -- chief information officer -- just like some universities and almost every large company in the country. I base that on who incredibly stupid some companies think college athletic departments are, and the fact that they aren't too far from accurate.

We had a presentation by one company in which the rep hit Cntrl-F in the browser to search for a term within a web page. Two coaches in the presentation went, ooh, ah, hey we need this program. I've always wanted to be able to search like that.

Oh. My. God. It's called Firefox. And Internet Explorer. The coaches really thought it was a feature of the service being pitched.

It seems a lot of these companies are the one-eyed man in the land of the blind -- athletic types with just enough computer savvy to seem uber-geek and sell those services to the lazy or ignorant. Key word there often is lazy -- can you write this for me, can you post this for me, can you fix my bookmarks.

Then again, maybe the real money is in consulting and training for athletic departments. Hmm.

Text is Dead; Long Live Evasion

The good news: the NCAA has approved the removal of text messaging from the recruiting process. Yes, this is how the next generation communicates, and on the surface the NCAA looks Luddite. Coaches (secretly) and athletes across America celebrate the decision. Why? Because too much of a good thing is bad, and texting was out of control.

There is a reason why recruits can only get one call a week, and only during certain times. In the past, overly aggressive coaches would call endlessly and at all times of the day and night. The idea was to show the athlete just how much they wanted him or her, and to prove their was more desire to have the athlete at the coach's school than others that didn't call as much.

Text had become the same thing, but worse. Text volume was in the 100s per day to some recruits. Many times, they were innocent "hi" and "good game", but some were deliberate attempts to circumvent the rules -- remember, one phone call a week but unlimited texts. There was nothing to say a coach couldn't text a recruit "call me" and get a second, third, fourth call per week because the coaches could accept unlimited calls.

You know something -- in most states they define that as stalking.

Have no fear, coaches who work the gray line. There's always SNW. Hey, NCAA, don't be shocked but your coaches are already on the friend lists of all the good athletes -- starting as early as the freshman year of high school. So now they can't text -- but they sure can go wall-to-wall on Facebook.

The Feds are After the SNW

OK, this won't help on the college level, but get ready for schools and libraries involving minors to start wholesale shutdown of SNW access. The Deleting Online Predators Act passed the House of Representatives by a whopping 410-15. And who wouldn't vote to get rid of predators? Of course, the devil will be in the details of enforcement. Expect over-reaction because its much easier to ban whole domains to cover one's rear against federal charges. (Take one look at HIPPA's impact on athletic training rooms and you'll see how that works).

Goodbye Text, Hello Facebook

NCAA management council voted to ban text messaging from the recruiting process. That's good if you're a recruit and a coach.

They wonder what's next, and pondered this thing called Facebook.

Oh yeah -- message for NCAA management: coaches are already there. They get on friend lists. They're going wall-to-wall on messages. On that, you're too late.

More VT notes later, but the prize winner so far to one of the networks who clued us all in on how these "social networking websites" were a key part of communication during and after the events.

Again, thanks for joining us on that one.

Long Time in Between

Hiring a coach and watching a coach be hired has keep the blog off-line the past weeks. However, let me interject a couple of points as work begins on a presentation paper on the events of the past month.

New maxim for internet strategy: When the or is worse than the truth, get the truth out in a hurry.

I say this in relation to some events in our sister department, but there was great shock at a press release detailing two positive tests with the men's basketball team regarding . OK, the initial reaction is to never, never draw attention to bad news, but in this case, the printed media reports and circulating ors and board/blog stories eluded to many more positives, positives for worse issues, academic issues, arrests and possible players on the take.

When the official word came down, the general reaction was, only two? That's not that different from other schools or the general student body. It leads to lots of posts begining, "back when I was in school . . . " that related how much worse things could be.

So, to put a halt to much worse stories and ors, get the word out when the issue isn't worse. That takes a lot more guts than it seems, and it seems like a foregone conclusion. To do this, you've got to be willing to admit there is a problem, admit that part of what was out there was true, but you also get the chance to set the record straight.

Kudos to my colleagues.

And While We're on the West Coast

How about that press guide editing at Stanford? Swim coach gets cross with star athlete. Star athlete says some things. Coach has last word by expunging the athlete from the press guide records.

Holy Cow -- Soviet Revisionist History at its finest! Comrades, the infidel is no longer with us, speak his name no more. Disappear the violator.

Unfortunately, this is no surprise to anyone who has been around the business for long. Coaches always want to tweak the truth when it comes to their historical record. Some are just more brazen than others. Just like academic politics -- you know, the stakes are so high because there is so little involved -- the less visible the sport or team the more involved the coaches become in these matters.

And the SID involved in this, talk about falling on the sword -- he thought it was OK because the coach's budget paid for the guide thus it gave him full editorial control. This is kind of like when a coach has made an "error" on their resume or press guide bio that THEY READ AND SIGNED OFF ON, and the blame falls on the PR guy.

Well, it guarantees future employment for the publicist. The fact of life is we often exist to take the hit. At the end of the day, however, the coach seems to almost always have one more zero on his paycheck compared to the foot solder that just took one for the team.

One final sad thought -- absent the San Francisco Chronicle noticing this blatant editing event, would anyone have done a darn thing about it? No.

More Stupid Athlete Facebooks

This from the Daily Trojan website at USC, some of the football players are in trouble because they made and joined up to a Facebook group entitled White Nation. It was a joke, they said. And, I don't doubt it, but in these days when you can be sent to rehab for poor choices of language, what would possess a college student to not understand the potential impact of a crude farce.

Like a Piece of You Has Died

If you are in the business, there is nothing worse than the departure of a coach that was well liked by the people they worked with. Such was the case last weekend. Investing four years in helping someone achieve, then in the space of 24 hours, gone.

Through the process, I kept counseling everyone that time would be of the essence. I had no idea. If you are involved in a breaking event with any level of media or exposure, if you think you have a day, you have hours; if you think you have hours, you really do have minutes.

More on this later in the year, perhaps at convention or in the Digest, but the timeline for the release of our coach's resignation was even fast by my standards. It stunned the participants, to the point of some negative feedback. In the end, however, the way it was handled by all parties earned us credit with both the media and our fans -- and that's the best possible result even if some of the people involved want to bark about it right now.

But, no rest for the weary -- hiring process up next.