Feel Like You're Talking to the Wrong Media?

More than likely, it's because you are.

Quick trivia question: who was the most read "journalist" over the last two weeks during the Big 12 Crisis?

Give you a hint: he was also one of the most quoted sources.

If you were among the cognoscenti, you answered Chip Brown from Orangebloods.com.

Brown recants for us his last week of reporting in a breathless, self-centered style that would make Dan Brown blush. That link is required reading, folks, on several levels.

I want to be clear, I pulled out my air quotes for journalist for the benefit of the old school. At a lot of institutions, Chip Brown would never get a credential -- he's one of them internets people. And he has every right to dislocate his shoulder patting himself on the back.

That is, as long as we understand my two-part hint. I can't speak to whether or not Brown sensed himself as a participant within the drama, but in the course of his reporting from sources within the Texas athletic department in particular, he became a de facto spokesperson for the Longhorns, steering (yeah, I said it) the story for the legacy media who were retweeting him and using him as a source.

How many newspaper stories or columns did you read last week that contained the phrase "according to Chip Brown at Orangebloods.com"? Here's an Orlando Sentinel example, and Waco Herald-Tribune. The Dallas Morning News got its hands on an email being circulated among the Baylor faithful to get politicians involved -- guess who was at the heart of the examples quoted? (Side note: the DMN article is a good read and a great example of if you're going to email out the talking points, make sure they are ones you want to see published verbatim along with your email address in the legacy media.)

Brown's duality as source and reporter is what makes this instructive and futuristic. Well, maybe not so modern -- for years on end, sports teams and athletic departments had their "homers"; from the birth of this nation, politicians have had their own media.

What seems different here is the individuality of Brown. The citizen journalist rises -- he may have an affiliation with a national network of participatory media websites, but he's a soloist. No traditional sports editor, no brick-and-mortar infrastructure, no legal team, no ombudsman.

In Brown's account of the Big Crisis, we get a first draft of this history, albeit without knowing who the players are that Brown is sourcing. Nevertheless, someone is putting out the flower pot for Brown, and he was definitely following the money. And finding some for himself. The turnaround passage from Monday tells the tale:

I cobbled a story together about how Texas had gone from nearly being signed, sealed, delivered to the West Coast to racing back to the Big 12 dinner table to see if there was any food. . . . I popped my story on Orangebloods.com at 8:36 a.m. and began Twittering furiously to draw attention to it.

He runs into the juggernaut -- ESPN writers call Brown out, and he is concerned. As he correctly surmises, they would have direct access to the Beebe bailout in Bristol. He sticks to his story.

I Twittered to my now 12,000 followers, "I'm not backing off my story."

Kind of Hunter S. Thompson for the perspiring arts.

With this crisis past, we begin an uneasy period. Is it really over? Did Baylor's social media Hail Mary work, or did it backfire by driving Colorado to accelerate? We've still got some summer weeks left to fill with gossip.

Winding this post up back at the original question, as media directors consider the landscape, they must put more and more stock in the digital media and social media. Brown spread to his 12K Twitter following because people believed him, and I'll bet they saw him more as a friend -- which Nielsen this week reminds us is still the No. 1 source for info -- and thus put lots of stock in his messages.

I'll bet Brown already had a seat in the Texas football media area on game day. If he didn't, I'll double-down that he should have one now.

Happy Father's Day

Nuff said?

Free The Screens

For years, I've railed against the short-minded mentality of locking out other distribution paths to "protect" broadcasts. If it's on-line, it will take away from the audience. NBC's Olympic work from Beijing proved the point, but some folks need repetition to get the message.

ESPN provides it again this week, via the Sports Journalism blog at Indiana. The takeaway quote:

Mobile devices and home computers are creating a bigger audience for ESPN’s sports content rather than cannibalizing its television programing

BTW -- that's from ESPN's president.

Nuff said.

The Times They Are a Changin'

A pair of interesting engagements with technology and those damn kids catch venerable journalist Helen Thomas and House of Representatives member Bob Etheridge off guard. If you've been oblivious, both were caught off guard with simple video recorders by college students -- with totally negative results as they emerged first on YouTube, then the networked media and finally transitioned into legacy media.

Will Levith at MediaFreak brings up the key point when musing about the Thomas fallout and her retirement:

More often than not these days, though, I wonder if this would've gone down differently in the pre-YouTube and -Twitter world. Sure, the comments were offensive, but would they have been hyperanalyzed on the same level?

Will, need your answer? Compare Arkansas' departure to the SEC with Nebraska's to the Big 10. The Razorbacks held all the info back until a giant reveal press event. The Cornhuskers discovered that the revolution would be Tweeted.

PIO Training Pays Off Again

Nothing like a solid emergency exercise to refresh the skills and remind the brain. Thursday I had the chance to volunteer with our county department of emergency management, and it brought back some of the lessons learned from public information officer schools both at the state and national level. Many of you following remember last year’s CoSIDA presentation on the importance of being familiar with the incident command system.

Once the functional exercise was underway and the radio calls went out over the air, I knew it was a matter of time before the media arrived at the front door. At the time, I was working in what’s called a COML role (communications leader, as in radio operations, not public relations), but flagged that possibility for the lead persons. Like clockwork, one of the local TV crews rolls up and it was time to hand off to my other COML and jump into PIO.

They heard the traffic, understood that it was a drill but were having to make sure it was. It proved a fantastic opportunity to fulfill two of the core tenants drilled in at PIO courses: Don’t wait until the emergency to start swapping business cards and educate the media about what your agency does.

The crew was very cooperative, and even took a moment to play along in the scenario. It forced some of the participants to realize they needed their own PIO folks along when they had to step out and take questions for a mock press conference.

Once that was done, I escorted the crew to get B-roll of the event, access they would never have in a real emergency but a perfect opportunity for one of the three stations in our area to understand what the process was in the background.

Later in the day, I overheard a stray comment about “you’d never let the media roam around your facility.”

That concerned me. As public agencies, there is a level of right to know. Certainly you would not allow that in a real event, but what better time to explain what happens, show the mechanism tax payers are providing and most of all – gain buy-in for the process in the event of the real emergency.

The media is a vital public safety partner. If the scenario of this drill were real, there would have been a huge message component – telling the public how to stay safe, what to do if they were impacted and the keep general order. By showing the local media how the system works during a drill, it will pay future dividends when they have to trust the local agencies, and be a partner with those agencies to get the information out.

I’m going to call that a double win yesterday.

For my college colleagues, a reminder that you can pick up a lot of the information that will enable you to be a contributing participant if you should have a major incident on your campus through the Department of Homeland Security’s FEMA on-line courses. You can volunteer with your local agencies for the chance to give yourself that “swap business cards” time with your own public safety groups. And, be sure to ask if you are the SID to participate if your school sends a contingent for training with NCS4 – the National Center for Spectator Sports Safety and Security. Thanks to outreach from CoSIDA to NCS4, the SIDs are now a part of the leadership group.

I Reject Your Reality

. . . and substitute my own - a famous tag line of Adam Savage from the Discovery TV series, Mythbusters.

That is somewhat how Arkansas feels at the close of today's business. The athletic director has said repeatedly for weeks, no months, on his on-line video show that the Razorbacks aren't leaving the SEC. Yesterday, he repeated that. And so did the chancellor.

In fact, even I got a call from a media member who shall remain nameless. Come on, can't I have an unnamed questioner if so many get to have unnamed sources?

We. Are. Not. Leaving. Period.

I will not pretend or be hypocritical enough to say that I haven't been reading with considerable interest the real-time reporting of the many digital media types who have done some interesting and admirable work on the past 10 days. This is not to call anyone out, but consider that the sources of a lot of today's stories were not in Fayetteville. They were reported to be "executive" types in either the Big 12 office or institutions.

Again, the executives at Arkansas have been really clear. And ahead of the curve - Long tweeted out a link to his statement on the main website yesterday afternoon.

After today's Texas based new rumors, he retweeted his own message. Not exactly SAYING IN IN ALL CAPS, but if you can't take the hint the first time . . . .

Not Exactly a Crisis Policy

Even the big boys fail when it comes to crisis plans and public relations. First rule of public information officer -- tell the truth, particularly where life-safety is involved.

CNN brings us a look into the public relations work by British Petroleum from the Texas refinery blast back in 2005. It does not paint a pretty picture for the company or the profession.

A lot of the info provided is adversarial -- it comes from one of the key lawyers that battled BP for damages and gained access through court filings to internal documents and emails.

Lessons for colleges here: They will remember your past events, and dredge them up. They will compare your past performance to your present actions. And, the truth will out.

Oh, who is the they? Back in 2005, pretty much the traditional media. Today, with the fragmentation of brand control and the rise of new paths of dissemination of information -- they is everyone.

For More Than Recruiting

It is hard to believe it has been a year since the Iranian Revolution, from those days that social media became something much more than a way to keep up with the intentions of athletic, talented 17-year-olds.

Certainly the events of the past seven days should have reminded us of the power of social media - once again, Twitter and participatory media become the force multiplier of the traditional media over the conference realignment saga.

HBO Films provides us a touching, gut wrenching story behind the death of Neda Agha-Soltan, voiced by Shohreh Aghdashloo, the Academy Award nominated actress you might better recognize as the terrorist family wife from 24 or currently a mysterious intelligence operative in FlashForward. As she speaks the opening lines of the documentary,

"Every conflict of the last 70 years has it's own defining image . . ."

I highly recommend taking a moment to watch, and remember.

This Changes Everything

And no, I don't mean the Big X-II.

It is the big X-Box.

ESPN3 comes to the Microsoft XBox platform, which means if you have XBox Gold accounts - like my wife and my son - you don't need to worry about logging on to the computer, rigging it to your big screen or pre-checking if you have ESPN3 available from you Internet server.

Why do I mention my wife and son? There's a pair of demos that you don't associate with ESPN3. Maybe you get the wife part, but my son, who is very interested sports fan and strong gamer, isn't a big play video on his laptop guy.

It is now as easy to use 3 as it is to use NetFlix - another service on the XBox they both LOVE.

How long until the iSpace?

" . . . Congress Shall Make No Law . . . "

The start of Federal Trade Commission hearings into ways the federal government might rescue journalism strike me as the start of something, well, evil this way comes. Ideas like taxes on internet-based devices -- an "iPad tax" -- to forced fees on aggregators -- the "Drudge tax" -- are the sane edge of the proposals. Federal funding for journalism students, tax breaks for "non-profit" journalism, money for AmeriCorps-like programs to support writers.

Can we hit the pause button, please?

Are we to infer that this really is the Great Depression II, and we need some WPA programs to support journalists? If the government pays or subsidizes the media, are we honestly to believe they will not try to influence it? Taxes on "free" news on the internet -- didn't we have a throw down with England over a little bill called the Stamp Act?

Not all coming before the FTC agree government is the solution. Jeff Jarvis gives an opinion piece on what not to do to save journalism.

Or are we simply going to hit the panic button? Jarvis:

Most dangerous of all, the FTC considers a doctrine of "proprietary facts," as if anyone should gain the right to restrict the flow of information just as the information is opening it up. Copyright law protects the presentation of news but no one owns facts -- and if anyone did, you could be forbidden from sharing them. How does that serve free speech?

I know this ranges off from our usual sporting angles, but all of you who doubt me as a spokesperson, bought and paid for by the athletic department, you're going to be comfy with a government agency deciding who owns facts?

How Futbol Should Be Called

Thank you ESPN. Genine, sincere thanks for NOT using the same chatty Kathy style of commentary on the World Cup men's games. An abject difference from the Women's World Cup or the 2006 men. No more fill every second blather that broke down into telling me what I could obviously see or tell lengthy human interest stories that got in the way of the contest. No joke, I recall hearing the same "her hometown is nearby" five times in one half during one of the women's qualifying matches.

No NBC Olympic soap opera personal stories. Just sport.

Martin Tyler yesterday for USA-England was pitch perfect. Tyler, a Keith Jackson of dry wit, on Clint Dempsey's goal "a hit and hope shot" but "if you buy a ticket, sometimes, you win a raffle."

Now there was a momentary Americanism today when the replays of the clips led to more than a few Bill Buckner references - you know, ca use us dumb Yanks couldn't appreciate Tyler's line: "it's a howler."

Not hearing the story of Dempsey's late sister during the game made me appreciate his obvious heavenly gesture after the goal. I saw the human interest angle in the pre game, where it should be.

Today, another excellent match call for Germany and Australia. Yes, the beautiful game, beautifully announced.

Soccer Haters

Each World Cup cycle there seems to be less and less pure soccer animosity among American sports media. In many ways, I've stopped worrying a lot about them. The usual "there's not enough scoring" comments.

That said, I'm watching our baseball team on TV, along with break ins about how a double no-hitter was just broken up between Cubs and White Sox. And there has only been two runs and two hits in half the baseball game. That's exciting?

Or watching horses run in circles.

The Bold Fresh Continues

Earlier, I mentioned how Baylor went all-in over the weekend with its social media to attempt and keep itself attached to the Texas 4 of the Big 12.

Ken Starr ups the ante today with another message to the Bear faithful, posted this time on the athletic department website.

Let's put the irony of a purported conservative jurist in Baylor's new president invoking the need for government hearing and intervention into what essentially is private corporate matters, the bold and direct call for fans to get involved with the politics here is the interesting point.

In the past, one might see a university president issue a letter to the editor of the local or statewide paper to get a point across. Today, they simply have to have the willingness -- dare I say the guts -- to put themselves out there on a world wide stage.

And Starr isn't alone. Famous graduate of another team in the midst of the Big 12 crucible, Missouri, has Tweeted his support for the leadership of his alma mater. Chase Daniel opined: Everybody relax...Missouri WILL land in a BCS conference...have faith in the leaders of our great University and State!

If You Spend No Other Money on Magazines This Summer

You -- yes you college sports communicator; you -- networked media person; you -- college administrator (yes, I know you lurk here); MUST run, not walk, to the newsstand.

Remember, where once upon a Kindle you bought magazines and newspapers?

Cuteness aside, James Poniewozik's in-print column for the June 14 Time Magazine is a tour de force on the digital force of nature known as Twitter.

The Soul of Twit covers the @BPGlobalPR feed -- a little dated with the previous post's news about the even better move by BP itself -- but in a classic piece of why magazine can remain relevant in a real-time media age, Poniewozik dissects the reasons behind the growing impact of 140 characters. One of two quotes:

As Twitter became popular, some writers pooh-poohed it: What could you say that's worthwhile in 140 characters or less? As it turns out, an awful lot.

For the record, that was 150.

Poniewozik goes well beyond the manner in which a form can reflect its literary age. Here's the second lift -- the one that should get real PR folks attention:

Because Twitter lit is immediate and telegraphic, it's suited to social commentary. Because it's first person, it's a natural for parody; fittingly for a service named for a bird noise. Twitter attracts mimics and mockingbirds.

Locally, we've seen a little of this (the fake Houston Nutt account comes to mind). Forget taking the time to create the www.fire[YourCoach'sNameHere}.com. Tweet them up.

I am reminded of two observations. The first is personal. I learned the economy of character and word working for about 20 years as a writer for Street & Smith's Magazine. At the outset, when typewriters and dinosaurs still roamed the earth, we were provided lined paper with a fixed width to compose. A top team in the league would only be allowed 20 lines, a certain number of characters. You learned quickly how to shorten, how to hone, how to edit. I find myself grateful for those verb selection skills every time I Tweet.

The second is a riff from Poniewozik. He recalls the shaping of printing and the pamphleteers -- some beautiful analogies that I again encourage you to go buy -- but he seems to run right past the social lit engine that best fits Twitter: the Japanese fascination with haiku. God bless Wikipedia, the 17 moras limiting the length of the composition, forcing the squeezing of an essence into what appears to be an inflexible form.

And when employed by a deft wordsmith, the 140 word riposte assemble into another grand Oriental cliche -- death by a thousand cuts.

By the Time This Gets Real, It's Too Late

We take this moment to break away from Conference Armageddon to relay this breaking news story.

FLASH -- @BPGlobalPR is not, we repeat not, an official spokesperson of BP.

Umm. Crickets chirp. Paper rattles down a dusty street. Feet shift back and forth.

Really? Gosh, thank you BP and Twitter for clearing that up. After allowing the one-man satirical band, Leroy Stick, to get traction among the hipsters, then a six-figure following on-line, and finally showing up in columns in the New York Times and most recently Time Magazine, BP made the bold move of formally requesting of @BPGlobalPR to be policed by the Twitter parody page policy.

One is left to consider that BP corporate had to wait until @BPGlobalPR made the traditional media before they invoked one of the most basic social media maneuvers.

By the time Time noticed, it was too late. I highly recommend picking up this week's dead tree edition as James Poniewozik discusses the matter (more in upcoming blog.) By the time the social media engine is getting "real" media, well, dare I say another blowout preventer has failed, and judging from Leroy's reaction, this Top Kill will be equally effective.

Time to Get It Past?

First day at the College Sports Video Summit, there were three presentations groups. All three brought up the same idea: sports information needs to change or it will be left behind.

Some were more blunt than others - "or be kept behind" being the mild version.

Communications offices as content creators, video creators, bloggers, recruiting presentation pieces, Tweeters - but no longer just PR guys relating with media.

Traditionalists will complain that I'm dredging up harsh past points written here. No, just repeating the podium.

That really wasn't the harsh point - one presenter implied it was too late, that it has already passed by SIDs to marketing, promotions and video offices.

I hope not, but another presenter urged these video and marketing directors to go back and encourage their SIDs to attend next year. Then, he asked, how many SIDs are here. Four hands in a room of about 200. He turned to the podium, and asked one of his co-presenters, "aren't you an SID?" As if he'd forgotten that it was part of his job, he made the count five.

Even More Remarkable to be in the Running

Fairfield wins the Sony Award, and their production was outstanding.  What I'm pretty sure the folks didn't know here is what was behind our two entries.

Congrats to Fairfield, but as their producer indicated in his acceptance, he had a donated production truck and a staff of 25 people to create their event.

Arkansas' gymnastics game - one full-timer in Blair Cartwright, who did all the preproduction video and switched the event.  Two camera operators and two unmanned cameras.  A volunteer stat person, who was also the play by play announcer.  A student athlete volunteer. A network computer assistant.

Repurposed cameras, a TriCaster - that's all video.  The graphics? PowerPoint.

One guy, three contract people, two volunteers vs the entire TV truck.

I'm really proud of the guerrilla production crew - who managed to place two of the five finalists.

Imagine what they can do with more assets.

A Different D-Day

64 years ago, Dwight Eisenhower committed the Allies to a bold move to turn the tide against the Nazis. The anniversary of Operation Overlord and the invasion landings at Normandy are celebrated today.

In the college world today, Baylor University has let loose its social media wing to launch a campaign to insure the Bears are included in any potential realignment of the college athletics landscape.

Maybe more Six Days in June than The Longest Day, but Baylor University has posted on one of the Waco, Texas, institution's official web presences marching orders for its supporters.

Entitled "Sic'em, Baylor Nation: BU and the Big 12," this effort bears (sorry, unintended pun warning) careful watching by all of sports -- PR, media, administrators. It lays out the argument for why Baylor should be included in the Pac-16 in the event of any future dismemberment of the league formed from the leftovers of the old Southwest Conference absorbed into the Big 8.

Why significant? Baylor has broken the seventh seal by taking its campaign viral. Public. Social. Tweeted to followers of it's special rah-rah feed Baylor Proud:

#Baylor & the @Big12Conference: What you need to know, & how you can help. Sic 'em, Baylor nation! http://bit.ly/aJ5DC0 (Please RT!)

By all media accounts, the Bears were on the outside looking in until the last 24 hours. The direction for Baylor fans from the website is crystal clear:

If you’re as proud of Baylor as I am, there may be something you can do to help. Tell your friends about Baylor’s successes and its importance in the Big 12; share your green and gold pride whenever you have the opportunity. The Texas legislature may have some say in what happens; think about letting your elected officials know how important it is to keep the Big 12 together and the Texas schools of the Big 12 a cohesive unit — not only for Baylor, but for fans across Texas.

The bold is mine within the clip from Baylor, but it speaks clearly to the message. We'd like the Big 12 to stay around, but we're not sitting around and waiting. This website push comes a little more than a day after BU's new president, Ken Starr, issued his own letter.

Whether this proves true or false, it will be the template for the bold in the future.

When Screen Names Were Still Pen

The claims of the unprecedented times in which we live are always a favorite target. Today, it is the terror of anonymous posting on blogs and websites. This overlooks the long history of political speech authored under pseudonyms to protect the authors.

Ranging from Publius in the Federalist Papers to X and the Long Telegram during the 1950s, many of the famous opposition positions to current lines of American political thought have been opposed by cloaked authors.

One thing you can count on -- whether the 1790s or 2010s -- the author's privacy will be revealed.

This is not to say that all great unnamed authors were working serious political issues. We're reminded today by tweet from Mental Floss that the past is just as snarky as the present.

Seems the Illinois state auditor was under attack in the newspapers by a person who signed letters simply as "Rebecca." A little work by the auditor revealed the author, and he proceeded to call him out in the papers: Abraham Lincoln. Seems the savior of the union was a sharp elbowed local pol early in his career, and the event resulted in an unusual dual -- broadswords on a plank over a large pit. Read more at Mental Floss on those details.

Yep, anonymous postings -- another piece of presentism.

Even Old Pros Make New Media Mistakes

A flip comment by Helen Thomas is now haunting the longest seated member of the White House press corps. Judging from the look of the video, Thomas likely didn't take the casual taping seriously. Regardless, she put her foot well into her mouth over foreign policy with Isreal. Could care less about the politics here, more interested in the point that even the most experienced of media members make errors of judgment. Should refocus your efforts to take care both with your own work, and impressing the increasing need for student-athletes to take both their privacy and their public statements seriously.

BP, Meet the Leroy Stick

The man behind the satirically biting @BPGlobalPR Twitter spoof "revealed" himself as Leroy Stick, a pseudonym, for a very upset Gulf region local. In his manifesto, he says to BP -- and every corporation (dare I say, Division I athletic program) -- that:

So what is the point of all this? The point is, FORGET YOUR BRAND. You don’t own it because it is literally nothing. You can spend all sorts of time and money trying to manufacture public opinion, but ultimately, that’s up to the public, now isn’t it?

Mr. Stick explains the meaning of his "name" also, along with some funny asides to the issues involved. In the middle of his rant, Stick gives us what I'd say should be his closer:

You know the best way to get the public to respect your brand? Have a respectable brand.

Truth.

For all my fellow SIDs, Stick's "press release" should be required reading. Might print a copy off for the boss, too.

For New Media Haters

More bad news: consumers want to know what they want to know, not what an editor decides is news. So writes Gina Chin on the Niemann Foundation blog. This is a nice quick overview of the Pew Center's latest survey on the impact of new media. (Please, when can we start just saying media again, or at least, digital media).

Chin's takeaway quote:
But the important point is that the loyalty isn’t to the platform, the application, the delivery system, or the brand. The loyalty is to the need for the information.

What they find is that certain platforms tend to have certain information. I'm a little befuddled by this point, that Twitter is the home for "tech" news. Have these people kept up with regular news lately? Twitter is pretty much the email distribution list of almost every college or pro sports team, and almost all the traditional media.

In reading over the Pew study's overview, I'd say that indeed, they didn't read sports. Perhaps this will take the Indiana school of journalism's sports media program to look into, but Pew gets a truly skewed concept of Twitter by ignoring sports. One of the points was that Twitter moves on from a story within a week, and there's a lack of continuing coverage.

Regardless, both scholarly sources point to the increasing importance of operating in the social media medium. You know, this Twitter thing might catch on.

Twitter = Morse Code?

My students this semester had been asking if I had been following the History Channel's new series, America: The Story of Us (clever little pun, no?). I had not, what with the excitement of the basketball and baseball seasons. Nevertheless, I'm catching up now, and quite pleased for the most part. Was taken with a couple of early, foreshadowing insights. Perhaps a little too presentism to say how the Committees of Correspondance and the U.S. Post Office was a prehistoric Internet. I will agree with one of the comments that every advancement in America was fueled by a technological change (I won't go as far as to make a direct link from the card-punch looms of Lowell, Mass., to Silicon Valley - yes, literally).

In e Civil War episode, I had to reach for my iPad when they narrator described Morse Code and it's impact on the war with the phrase "ideal for brief messages, like Twitter today, it needs just seconds to send them and transcribe them."

Timeout. Did you really just:

A) Date this series with a tech reference that will sound worse than all those 1950s "Land of Tommorow" cartoons.

B) Seriously compare the first true, time compressing technology to a 140 character chat box toy of the Internet age.

Well, yes. And, yes.

As a history prof, good luck using that episode in classrooms without snickering in a few years. (As the Friendster of its day . . . ).

But the more I think about the telegraph reference, the more I found it apt. In it's best real-time reporting ability, the Western Union was the means of news transmission, filling the time between military information in this era and railroad traffic as we move forward into the great transcontinental roads. Could you imagine the Iran crisis without it; the Haitian earthquake?

The one big difference - by the skilled nature of the telegraph operator (and as a ham operator who struggled to surpass his own Morse code test) made it an essentially elite communications tool. Twitter, and other packet oriented simple text communication tools, once installed, are incredibly democratic and open as to who can use them.

Live Blog Dilemma

The NCAA comes to town this week with it's "improved" live blogging policy. As many know, I have been an outspoken critic of the policies as unworkable. I do respect the data rights when it comes to the live stat stream - it is an act of performance to call the game as surely as it is to do so on the radio or TV.

The improvement here is removing the time to post (two posts per quarter in football, as an example; one per inning) into the extraordinarily vague no descriptions of game play.

To quote from the policy:
"the blog may not produce in any form a “real-time” description of the event. Real-time is defined by the NCAA as a continuous play-by-play account or live, extended live/real-time statistics, or detailed description of an event."

Hmm. So if I were to record my observations of every play and load them an inning at a time - which media had figured out to comply with the old time/post rules, I'm in violation.

If we are to keep our website's credentials, we won't be able to do our interactive blog that has become so popular with our fans. We can't provide any real-time reporting, no descriptions of the game that will conflict with the streaming stats - rights held by CBS.

The dilemma - and where the NCAA is not recognizing reality - is that if I walked out into the stands, using my iPhone, I could run the exact same interactive blog. Just as the Olympic officials have discovered, technology is running over their ability to "control" the coverage.

Thus, do we serve our fans, or do we serve our masters? Again, if I didn't see official and unofficial interactive blogs for almost every major pro sports event (even concerts), I'd probably not think twice about this.

I'm pretty confident that absent our interactive, a thousand or so fans will have to go find somewhere to keep up - and it will not be the live stats. Pick up the clue phone, NCAA and CBS - GameTracker is a Flash based product; no iSpace coverage for you. Oh, and that streaming video that will be provided free, per NCAA? Yep, Flash based. Unless the NCAA sends a blogger, this will send the fans to the message boards, or some bright fan will run the interactive in the stands and off the grid.

What would you do?

iPad Curation App

Newsy.com has an interesting take on national stories with an app that provides multiple clip mashups. In our field, interesting that the KU ticket scandal reached the level of national news. There isn't a lot of depth in the narrated pieces - only two or three per subject area per day - but they were interesting. Seems to look for the controversy items that have entertaining or slightly sensational personalit-driven angles - Palin accusing Obama of being cozy with BP or Carville ripping Obama for slow personal action. The app is free and with a dearth of decent iPad news apps that don't have ridiculously high subscription models, might get some traction.

Social Media Graph

From the CoSIDA website, a somewhat obvious story out of PRSA West -- Web 2.0 is very important to your message and legacy media is struggling.

What I find most interesting is the graphic that went with it. A nice representation of the duality of the task in front of us today. Two audiences, one message.

Memorial Day Pause

In spite of the demands of the NCAA baseball tournament, I'm pausing as much as possible on this Memorial Day weekend to remember our veterans. I think of my dad, a reluctant participant in the Second World War. I say reluctant, not that he tried to avoid it, but that he was not necessarily "proud" of it. No heroic stories; in fact, pretty gritty recollections that the recent HBO series, The Pacific, brought home.

For my wife's Uncle Buddy, a man who gave very much in service during Vietnam, and for Sam, my mom's "second husband" who lived with her after my father died and then cared so tenderly for her during her cancer. Sam was a veteran of three wars, ending in Vietnam, working rescue helos in the marines.

The Perilous Fight -- the old PBS series built out of existing color film from the 1940s -- is here from NetFlix. Couldn't have come at a better time, and I highly recommend putting it on your que or buying it (there's 20% off this weekend at PBS.org).

And right here, the 188th is back home in Fort Smith -- the Fighting Razorbacks with their A-10 Warthogs. Welcome back, Loel, our regular Kandahar correspondent on the baseball blogs this spring.

To all, a happy Memorial Day and a grateful thank you for all your service.

With the 865th in the South Pacific

The Huskies' Hustle vs. Sestak Stall

Today's local paper brings us two examples of public relations strategies in the face of embarrassing crisis. At the University of Connecticut, the men's basketball program takes the hit of multiple primary rules infractions. The Husky athletic department issued a press release, the documents -- quite lightly redacted, BTW -- from the NCAA, and issued video and written statements of the individuals involved. (I might also add, front page of website, not buried, still in the news rotation today.) We can see from the documents pretty clearly what was accused, who did it, and the only mystery is who was the recipient. It is also out there that the recruit was expelled from UConn -- this we get from the media reports. But UConn is out front, and making their best effort to create a "one day" story. No follow-up FOI requests. No running statements -- the press release made clear there would be no further statements beyond those given. The Huskies hustled to get the event behind them. Over. Done. Do you best to move on.

Contrast that with the open sore that is the Joe Sestak job offer from the White House. Earlier in the week, the White House press secretary found himself repeating over, and over the same statement -- that he stuck to his statement from March -- and that was not satisfying the media. Today, we get a report from the White House counsel's office that indeed, an offer was made to the Pennsylvania Democratic challenger to Arlen Spector's senate seat.

Not exactly Secretary of the Navy. But that's how far this tale had spun out of control. The White House had stonewalled, had denied, had evaded. And if the counsel's finding is true, this appears to be much ado about nothing.

Except it has overwhelmed a race, and could have gone away weeks ago, if the White House had simply said -- we offered the U.S. representative a plum advisory spot if he'd get out of the way of the former Republican senator that the President had promised to help get re-elected.

And, we'd probably not have found out that former President Bill Clinton was the broker of the deal.

To some extend, Sestak is responsible for the controversy when he said he had been approached to get out of the primary battle. But, he never said what he was offered, and the Obama administration -- if not directly denying -- obfuscated the circumstances.

This floats up on our shores because Clinton was in Little Rock for a groundbreaking at his library. Guess what -- he wasn't made available to reporters to talk about the Sestak offer. And in classic three-way drug deal gone bad pistol pointing, no one knows who requested that the Clinton would not take questions from his former hometown paper. -- not Senator Blanche Lincoln's PR team (who Clinton spoke for and endorsed in our Dem runoff), not the Secret Service detail, not Clinton's spokespersons.

So, the Sestak Stall continues. Here perhaps the politicians could take note of the sports world.

Get it over in one day -- and move on.

Facebook Follies Continue

The battle over the new Facebook privacy policy has ratcheted up another notch as technarati are claiming that a spam bot is actively deleting wall post references to removing accounts. That seems a bit excessive, and does tend to back the privacy advocates worries that Facebook is not operating in it's users interests and may be not actively trying to surpress "dissidents."

Bears watching, because if we have invested our social strategies into a platform that users may begin to no longer trust, that would reflect back on brands operating there.

Go Pro Hero

Highly recommend this versatile, small personal point of view camera. It takes a nice fish-eye shot, but also does video -- HD in a waterproof, shockproof casing with a ton of image stabilization. Made for use in rally racing, F1 and extreme outdoor sports (you know it's tough when you can buy it with a surfboard mount kit).

We expect to do a lot of in-house POV with athletes this year for our video productions.

This shot is from the press box at the SEC Tournament this afternoon. Notice the helicopter circling to take pics for SEC.

Longer Than Anticipated Days

Whew. Nothing like the last game of a baseball tournament, followed by a loser bracket game the next morning. Hope to regain a little time tonight to catch up here.

The Not So Anonymous

Anyone who follows me on the message boards know I've used the tag line for some time of "Opinions are Fun, Especially Anonymous Ones." I will admit, that's my own back-hand to the idea of hiding behind a screen name. In this way, call me old school, but I tend toward the general rule of thumb used in the newspaper letters to the editor for opinions -- your name, your address and your home town. A real person had to make a real opinion.

Not so on the internet, and we've had to grow accustomed to the world of screen names. Look, I had a handle back in the 1970s when I used my CB, too.

One of my standing preaching points about public persons participating in the social media is you better go in as yourself and be transparent. Because sooner or later, you can be connected to your posts. There is no such thing as anonymous -- unless maybe you're Chloe O'Brian or Penelope Garcia.

Playing catchup on the road with podcasts, so apologies for referencing back a April 2 edition of On the Media in which the case of the Cleveland Plain Dealer newspaper outing one of its anonymous commentators as a local judge. Bob Garfield, the host, gives the Inspector Renault reaction that he was shocked to learn the editorial staff could have access to the email addresses used to register for comments. The P-D spokesperson replied yes, but we don't have that any more.

The editorial staff might not, but the I.T. department certainly does.

Now the story got more interesting as the newspaper backtracked the handle to discover that the poster had made public comments regarding cases the judge was hearing. Hmm, suddenly we have a lot more than a newspaper trying to even the playing field on an anonymous thorn in its side.

As you might suspect, the judge sued. Guess what? Better read that EULA -- by clicking OK on the P-D site, users (like virtually every site in the western world) waived the right to privacy, that their data could be sold to outside groups and could be revealed to police or other authorities if crimes were suspected.

The judge's 22-year-old law school student daughter stepped up to say she was the poster, but the Plain Dealer made an open records request of the I.T. logs of the judge's public office computer. Guess what? IP logs show the judge's computer logged into the Plain Dealer website at the same time some of the comments were posted.

Side bar -- did you notice the byline used by the reporter "Breaking News, Real Time News" on the blog entry for the P-D?

Essential Twitter

One of the latest task is coming up with guidelines -- our own digital media stylebook -- for students and interns to follow when operating our feeds. Here's a first installment for comment, that carries the heading of "Essential Twitter."

With 140 characters to say it, economy is important. Punctuation is optional. The AP rules do not apply. That said, the often childish shorthand migrating over from text messaging should be avoided. Repetition should be avoided. And in reality, it should be said in 120 characters.

The choice of the verb in a Tweet is what separates run of the mill texting from genuine real-time reporting. Obviously, there is no room for the passive tense; short active verbs and simple declarative sentences.

Quick shorthand is acceptable. Down and distance in football? 1&10. Time in basketball? 848-2ND or 1348-3Q. Innings? Top 3. Versus? Simple “v” (that’s two characters saved). Start times – 130p, 11a, 4-430p. Other numbers like 10K, 1500m. The character savings here can be used to accurately convey scores, results or times.

Remember the “#” often used for rankings becomes a hash tag in the Twitter world. Unfortunately, this is going to waste characters – No.16 rather than #16.
Speaking of hash tags, employ them for regular events, and be consistent. With a long school name (Arkansas) or a mascot (Razorbacks), know that your natural hash tag labels will be costly to the 120 character overhead. For Arkansas, #gohogs and #hogs are popular with fans. For our own tag searching, we are advocating #WPS (woo pig sooie). It also separates Arkansas tweets from Harley-Davidson fan tweets.

And why only 120 characters? You want to be retweeted, and you want to give those resending your information space for their own RT or via. Make that space for them.

While I Drive

No, I'm not keyboarding down I-40. I did preload some things that will come up over the next day -- remember, busy times in Hoover.

And, happy 800th post here on the blog. The millennium looms ahead.

Hitting the Road

Posts may be scarce again -- time to head east to the SEC baseball tournament today in Hoover, Ala.

I am looking forward to this -- first trip there for the baseball tournament for me.

Also can't wait to bring our interactive blog on the road, and meet some of the Birmingham area BlogHogs who have been taking part in the conversations.

Mini don't fail me now.

Why Sign The Posts

I've been asked recently, why do you use your name prominently on blogs that you post the department website? Massive ego, of course. Well, that's what some may think, but it actually comes down to a pair of things that should be considered as a part of a social media strategy.

The first is transparency. The readers and fans want to know who you are -- it is a social medium, after all -- and they can relate more to you as a person rather than the blanket cover of generics like "sports information," "media relations office," etc.

The second is accountability. Putting in byline isn’t just to promote the writer. Anonymous work tends to have anonymous mistakes. For the fan base, it also validates our desire to use real names by them.

While we operate for the greater whole of @ArkRazorbacks or ArkansasRazorbacks.com, by clearly letting the fans know who is making a post or is on the keyboard reinforces our transparency -- something that we have not been doing lately and need to begin doing immediately. Old habits die hard, so I'm sure it will take a bit for us to all remember to use the caret tag.

For Twitter work, the accepted shorthand is a caret symbol then the writer’s initials: ^BS, for example, for Bill Smith. This also helps the fans understand when different voices operate the same feed, or when someone else besides the named individual posts. This is most important if the media contact for a team update a coaches’ named Twitter feed; same for assistant coaches on head coach feeds. The on-line community understands when there is no caret at the end that the person writing is the feed owner.

The Facebook Backlash

Several high profile digirati have deleted their Facebook profiles, making this the latest cool kids move among the uber-geeks. Leo Leport of TWiT and Jason Calacanis of Mahalo recently "committed suicide" or "jumped" with their profile deletions.

Leport makes an interesting point on his recent podcast -- yes, he had 10s of thousands of followers but he essentially was helping Facebook populate its world by bringing his content and brand to them. Leo has begun to doubt the value of "Facebook's megaphone."

Calacanis is much more biting with his feelings. His weblog provides a detailed account of his issues with the privacy failures of Facebook, and his concerns about Mark Zuckerberg specifically.

It is an interesting pro-con read, as his commentators are making some hard points against the move.

Certainly, it would be counter intuitive for an athletic department to walk away from the chance to organize and communicate with their large fan bases -- over 51K for the Arkansas Razorbacks, for example.

Calacanis does raise some serious questions for individuals, however, that use the system.

Remembering Guenter Wendt

Yesterday's Arkansas Democrat-Gazette devoted its lead editorial to a late obituary and tribute to the late Guenter Wendt.

Who?

If you read the editorial -- they are subscription, but worse when it goes archive for even higher fee, so jump soon if you're a local -- it describes the life of the man who for almost all the major manned space missions was the last person seen by the American astronauts. He was the German who closed the hatch and saw to the final details. There's a throw away about how Tom Hanks used an insider joke about Wendt in Apollo 13.

In the piece, there is also the creepy detail that Wendt helped pack away the most precious cargo of the U.S. on all but one of it's great Space Race missions: Apollo 1. Different subcontracter, didn't have Wendt on the crew. Knowing the details of what caused that catastrophe, hard to say that Wendt could have changed fate; but he sure was there for the rest of Apollo.

Why remember an ex-Luftwaffe man who became just another stereotype German mechanic emigre for NASA in the Werner von Braun era? From the editorial:

Think of the backstage crew of an opera, or at a newspaper. Guenter Wendt was one of those millions upon millions. They may have a wrench in their hand and stripes on their shoulders at a Marine supply depot in Afghanistan, or a mouse in their hand at some computer in Washington, D.C., or two hands on a tractor’s steering wheel in Lafayette County, Ark., but they’re the ones who make the world go ’round. And they don’t mind that their names don’t appear in headlines. Not at all. They just do their jobs. Competently. Guenter Wendt was one of them.

That is why we remember Guenter Wendt.

Being Your Own Media

Yes, the provocative title of the panel I've been asked to speak at CoSIDA this year.

Previous post touched on part of the result of the decision to be more pro-active with our media production. Every time this gets brought up, I hear from legacy media members about how the goal is to replace them.

No, not at all. They continue to serve their valuable societal role -- watchdog, commentator, etc.

What many of them also want to do -- harvest the low-hanging fruit of easy streaming - is where some of the tension happens. All it takes is the tech to set up a camera and stream out a press conference.

Individual protestations of legacy media members notwithstanding, I don't see our role at RazorVision as trying to "control" our message by serving as the streaming provider. Quite the opposite. Not unlike the White House or C-SPAN, we're making sure the entirety of events are presented to everyone; and that all sports get represented.

So yes, we do want to be the one that brings you events -- and of those 148 events we produced last year, probably 100 of them had no media coverage other than what we provided.

Now, I'm not going to pretend to be naive and say we don't have a point of view in a lot of our other work -- a media release, a feature package -- but on the streaming events, it is pretty hard to "manage" something going out pretty raw and complete to fans and interested parties.

And since almost all of the media events are free, I'm also not understanding complaints that we are trying to profit off a post-game basketball press conference.

I'm interested in feedback here -- from fellow CoSIDA types and media. As with all other previous national convention presentations, I'll roll out many of the details and points here over the next couple of weeks.

Pardon Me While I Brag

At least this TPS report is one that gives me some sense of pride. Last academic year, our little New Media operation cranked out 148 live game/contest streams. On our TriCaster unit, over 250 hours streamed alone. That doesn't count the 54 live press conferences or announcements, another 20-30 audio only streaming events.

All of that is before we add in the 143 audio streaming events from the rights holder, ISP.

Not sure, but it might have something to do with our page views and uniques hitting new highs this year too.

Privacy Might Be A Problem If . . .

The New York Times provides this stunning graphic that brings the recent wave of Facebook privacy issues into focus. You can see the whole item here:

Business Day -- May 12

It graphs out the over 100 little details, defaulted public, by the way, that daunt the Facebook user.

I like the factoid that the EULA on privacy has grown from 1,000 words to well over 5,000, and is now longer than the U.S. Constitution.

Here's a simpler way to deal with your Facebook privacy: Assume you have none.

The iZone

Interesting and profound thought in the Chronicle's recent 40 years after Kent State story.  Taking about how campus has changed wi th more meetings for clases, more sports and Title IX driven teams, there is a lack of time to sit and plot - not time for The Brain to declare to Pinky that tonight, we do what we do every night, try to take over the world.

In seriousness, the time sinks that are college sports - off to practice - or the more vocational of our curricula - got a study session tonight - or the increased social aspects - another meeting to attend - runs smack into the even greater impact of the 24/7 culture and Moore's Law (as it speaks of students arriving with "more low-priced electronic gadgetry than a family SUV can haul to campus").

The key quote:
"Forty years ago, one hall phone for a dozen rooms and a television lounge shared by students in the dorm necessitated the negotiated use of social space and fostered a common sense of American life.  Now, students are plugged into their own isolating iSpace, Facebook, Twitter, and the Internet may create community of a sort, but those communities are fragmented and isolated from one another."

The author, Jerry Lembcke, continues that groups like SDS find themselves undermined by the new paradigms of study.  A junior year study abroad program at the moment one might have gone to Port Huron instead; seniors obsessing over GREs and final years internships.

Great read, but I was most taken by the "iSpace" quip. Look, at the signposts up ahead, you've now crossed over, into the iZone.

Stealth Pad

Here's another iPad plus - a silent keyboard that allows for note taking Nile students are taking a test. I've written my share short blog posts waiting for the tests with ever so careful and slow typing on the classroom computer. There was never a way two keep that clacking down to a quiet level at the speed I type.

Oh, but turn off the sound on the iPad, and you can go to town at full speed and Underwood No. 5 force.

These Are Days That Keep You Going

Sometimes you get immediate feedback that is discouraging.  OK, a lot of the time if you are in a creative field.  You learn to deal and take the positive out of it.

Teaching can be the same way.  Tonight was the final for my class at NWACC. It had been an interesting mix, and some weeks, I felt like my own "troubles" - and that is a bad word choice, but the only thing to come to mind when you are battling against tough work demands and challenges - sometimes made my performance in class not as inspiring, fresh or organized as I wanted.

When a class does bad on a test, I take it personally.  Sure, some of them just don't study, or have given the amount of effort they need to get the less than outstanding grade they want.  (I have always been most frustrated when people settle - whether in class or elsewhere.)

So tonight's final was touching.  Sally Field touching when one student after another came up to thank me for the class.  Three wrote letters or notes after their essays about how they had hated history in the past, but thanks to this class, they were reconsidering that.

I'm not writing this to brag.  I'm writing it to thank them.  Each semester I come to this class wanting to change students view of how history is important to every one of them.  Important to this nation.  That the past is important to the future.  And when I can have a year like this, where they respond and they get it - you know, it really isn't about the teacher (or the coach) - it is about the students.  If they get it, you did your job.

Might add, not all these kids were the A students.  In fact, a couple of them were genuinely struggling.  But they stayed with it, they made progress, they improved.

And as much as you all in HIST 2013-11 say you enjoyed the class, I enjoyed that from all of you. 

Thank you for making my semester.

Home Screen Icons

Clean up your Apple bookmarks for the home screen by adding an icon to your websites. Right now, the default method of making a home screen button used by Apple's mobile OS is to screen capture the page, then allow you to label the button.

The result is really nasty looking postage stamp sized micro views.

What if you could control that logo? Make a faux app icon so that your website matches the real apps.

Create your icon as a 45 pixel square, and save it as a PNG graphic rather than GIF or JPG. The naming is the key -- "apple-touch-icon.png"

Save the icon into the root directory of your website, and voila. That's all it took for my work on RazorbackFoundation.com. If you have an iPhone, try it and you'll see.

If for some reason your don't have access to the root, or in a virtual directory hosted situation, have your provider load the following line of code into the HEAD section of the index and templates of other pages:

link ref="apple-touch-link" href="/target/ "

(Obviously, add the "<" and ">" at end of the code that I had to remove to make Blogger recognize this is not a piece of code -- note that it is an "open" piece of code that lacks a close tag.)

where the ~target part is the location where the apple-touch-icon.png is saved. This was the solution our provider had to do on ArkansasRazorbacks.com.

If you want to watch a step-by-step video of how to, go to the Adobe Creative Suite Video Podcast and go to the April 13 episode, "Create Custom iPhone/iPod touch home screens."

You'd be shocked at the number of websites and social media types that still haven't taken advantage of this small detail.

No Spin Zones

You'd think that by now folks would know better than to continue the spin.

Nice story on the subject for this weekend's Morning Edition.

Americans Don't Fall for Spin During Crisis

PaidContent.Org

Site discovered this week - they cover exactly what you might expect, paid content on the internet, and has a lot of resources and stories about media strategies to create and foster paid content.

I come across it through TWIT (of course) as they made a throw-away mention of a statistic from the site that currently, video consumers under 35 will utilize just over three different devices in the same day to view content. The projection in five years was over six devices.

Do the math. That means your video/audio/live content needs to live on the television (1 -- and a nod to the old school in listing it first), on the static internet (desktop/laptop) and the mobile internet (iPhone/Android/etc).

That's today. Is that happening, or do you still have rights holder walls preventing that?

You Cant Do That with Kindle

I worried about the eye strain of the lit screen on the iPad versus Kindle. As my colleague Blair Cartwright said about his, you don't need a night light to read anymore.

I had done the bed reading before, but tonight, on a gorgeous spring night with a strong swirling wind, it was simply delicious to sit on the deck outside our bedroom and read in the dark among the tree tops.

Yeah, score another point for the iPad. And bonus at with "writing a blog post in the dark", too.

Curation Columns Gain Traction

This month's new buzz word is "curation," as in a column that curates what's on the internet about a subject of interest. Hmm, sounds a lot like Topix hypernews from back in the ancient days of 2000. That oldest of old school -- links pages and news aggregation.

Well, everything old is new again. If you want a primer, this column isn't bad from Business Insider, but it is over a year old.

The new roles for SIDs in this become serving as the curator for their sports. They already should be doing the old tyme version of that: saving and archiving stories, stats, images, data. Now they need to become the sorters of on-line information about their teams and sports. Oregon is doing some of this with their sport contact blogs.

However, the linking to others is a little bolder. Oklahoma has one of the more intricate and dense curation blogs for its football team. One stop shopping for a lot of info. Ole Miss has a nice blog by its SID personnel that does similar work, but more overview and broad based. And back at OU, their senior associate AD, Kerry Mossman, has a long-standing column that's not terribly unlike my own Bill's Blog, but more topic driven than event driven. (Mine have gone in two forms, the traditional features, the traditional game and now much more of the CoverItLive interactive.)

The future lies in between -- little more detail, more links for those sports that generate them.

The value and the danger is in the judgment calls that lead to what makes the curation page. This may be the separation point between real-time reporter -- the digital correspondent that repeats what they see to whoever is listening -- and the journalist -- independent or branded, who uses a background of the subject to sort the wheat from the chaff.

It really is an information fire hose out there -- curation becomes the nozzle that makes the stream drinkable.

Good Enough for the Prof

Interesting study from Pearson, the scholarly publishing company, that more professors are using social media than you might think.

As in, four out of five.

Get the whole story at the Chronicle, but to me, another vital pull quote:

Professors with more than 20 years of teaching experience use social media only slightly less than do their younger peers. (Mr. Seaman found a similar lack of age discrepancy in an earlier survey about faculty members and online education.)

It's not an age thing; it's a mind set.

A New Slide for the PowerPoints

By now, you've surely seen the SocialNomics YouTube PPT about the value of social media. In it is a mainstay item of how long go X number users/viewers of key technologies of the late 20th century.

Well, here's the next slide: while Apple isn't officially talking, industry experts see iPad at more than a million units (some say 1.3 this week with an additional 300k of the new 3G units).

What's the big deal?

iPad has been out for less than one month.

It took iPhone 71 days to reach a million units.

And iPad has no compelling use. It costs a lot more than he phone.

But those 1.3 million screens are threatening to change they way the entire Internet presents video (the flash debate). Just might make good on the promise of reforming the print media industry. And in further news this week, Amazon makes a grand gesture by changing its banner ad to a "download the Kindle app for iPad."

Yeah, it's just a toy.

35k Comment

Dwight Howard certainly has star power, but to use a Hollywood phrase from the Dennis Miller lexicon, does he really have (bleep) you money? Maybe as NBA commish Stern handed out $35k fine to Howard for his comments about how much he perceives to be a foul target of officials.

Hope it was worth it.

Now that Howard gets disciplined for comments isn't that odd, really. Corporate America has adopted social media policies that restrict free speech and sometimes lead to not just fines, but termination.

What I find interesting is that I come across that story not on the sports wires, but listed under Internet news on Reuters.

iHog 1.4

If you're a baseball fan, I highly recommend you get to iTunes and update to iHog.

'Nuff Said?

RadarScope on iPad

Oh my - this phone app was my favorite, but the upgrade for iPad is stunning.

22,282 Readers Can't Be Wrong

That's the total number of readers on the first 30 CoverItLive interactive blogs for ArkansasRazorbacks.com. Not bad, but add in another 14,682 replays.

It's serious participation. Percentage of that reader count that stays longer than one minute -- 80%.

This past Sunday, average time each reader spent with the page: 41 minutes.

I think that's what the new age advertising types call "engagement."

I've been asked why do you do it? Why spend the time it takes? Why not just assign a student? (well, full disclosure, I have trained one of our students to take some of the load, and he does just great work.)

What's it good for? Too much risk. What about negative comments? How can you manage that and still do media relations.

Let me refer back to the above figure -- this job is about public relations, and with an average readership plus replays of around 1,400 per event, that's equal to or better than home attendance average for most of our teams.

Besides, the media reads it, and they get notes and seem to like it too.

Point of fact, we had 775 at Bogle Park for the softball regular season finale, another 75 on the blog. There were just over 8,205 at the same time at Baum Stadium for baseball, and another 1,456 total readers on the blog.

Adding another 10 to 20 percent to the attendance virtually? I'd say that's reason enough.

But it is not just the numbers, it's the bonding. I've said it before here, I'll say it again -- and BTW, I'm filing a trademark request for it -- the key to the future for any organization is converting Brand into Bond.

Anyone can talk about the value of their brand, the power of a brand, the reputation of a brand. Guess what, with today's social media world, that brand is only what the users of it say it is.

Thus, what is the vital key to strengthening the attachment fans, consumers, etc., to the brand? You guessed it -- anything that allows them to participate, to be a part and to convert the Brand into Bond.

Oh, and about that 743 per event that you've likely done the math on to say -- gee, that's not much. Remember, one of our 30 events was a test with 1 reader and the first softball event with only 35 (but it had 102 replays). It launched with no pre-publicity. No hype beyond placing it on the home page.

Other schools and pro teams have used this with greater success in raw numbers than Arkansas, but if you'll commit to it, be open with the fans, be willing to take a reasonable criticism. On that age old fear that we can't have anything negative on the official website; watch, your fans will take care of that with positive feed back better than you can. Why? Oh, it's that Bond thing -- and I don't mean James Bond.

Short of live video -- which most of these folks also watch from us WHILE they are on the interactive blog -- nothing will keep fans on your site longer and in greater numbers.

Thank You Nicholas

Baptismal events at the Episcopal Church tend to happen on certain days; today was one of those with the bishop in town.

I did not know the little boy before hand, nor his parents. They brought him in his stroller, a Pooh bear attached to the front bumper bar. Once they passed toward the front, I could see the medical devices. Then, I noticed the tubes -- they looked like ventilation ones. No special stroller however; a family working hard to make this youngsters life what some would call "normal."

I know a little bit about those rigors. One of our kids had a monitor, we have had both parents face long-term care issues. I say little, because our challenges were nothing compared to what I could perceive theirs might be.

But today, that was not evident at all. Smiles. Faces of genuine glee. And, an angelic sort of contentment. Maybe blessing is a better word.

They were so happy. They had gotten their young son to church, and he would make it to his baptism.

A lot of our ceremony is about the commitment of the god parents and the congregation to support the babies and young children baptized along their life long path. I couldn't help but wonder if this little man -- I say that because children who weather such challenges are often more mature, more sated, more together at times than adults -- will be with us for us to live up to our end of those prayers.

This much I know today. Whatever difficulties I face, whatever events that seem so terribly important, they aren't anything like his. And I could only bask in the true happiness of little Nicholas and his parents and extended family.

Thank you Nicholas. God bless.

IPTV Hurry, I Can't Wait

Last night was tragic for our state, and while managing the live blog last night for the Razorback baseball game was typing with and monitoring reports from the tornado zone.

So the moment I get out of the Baum Stadium press box, it's a bee-line home to the DIRECTV to see what I can. First up, The Weather Channel. They should have live coverage, right.

Well, no. They were having some Friday night movie feature - Wind and Weather, Horse and Hound, who knows? - but was one of these new programming features of cable channels to "broaden" the base. Think TBS Dinner and a Movie, but weather oriented.

Are you freaking kidding me? The station quick to send Cantore live at the drop of a hat - holding with this programming.

Look, I know that the History Channel's highest rated program is Ax Men, a reality show about logging. That Cartoon Network is launching it's first non-animated series. You looking for music videos - don't turn to MTV. You know you're old when you can remember when that stood for Music Television.

OK, so The Weather Channel has gone into entertainment. Fine. What's on CNN. Um, Louisiana oil spill wall to wall in the Situation Room. Alright, Fox News - nope, that's an O'Reilly rerun from 7 p.m. Right, they're into programmed news. Certainly Headline News - the original breaking news station - must be live.

Oh my . . . . Entertainment news, parcing John Edwards' bastard child's mom words with Oprah. Seriously.

[Hand raised in front of distant computer screen] Excuse me, what in the hell does this have to do with YOUR channel here?

Thank you, glad you asked. Functionally, I run the Razorback Channel. And days like this remind me exactly what our fans/viewers/constituents want: all Razorbacks, all the time, and most important, when and where they want it.

So what I really wanted last night - to see the four Little Rock TV stations, live, on my TV to get info. I wanted IPTV. Of course, I could have fired up the computer and maybe gotten some of that, but at the end of a long day on the keyboard, I just want to punch it up.

That is what our fans want. They don't want to hear about blackouts and platform exclusivity. Many of them do understand it costs money, and will pay for that access. Most don't want it free, but they do want it freed.

Hey Patrick

Look there's former UA grad, NW Arkansas resident and once W5YM spotter Patrick Marsh on Weather Channel. He's talking live about being the logistics support guy back home in Norman, Olka., for Vortex 2.

Guilty of AppleCrime

Perhaps in our great futures, we may all share in the guilt by association of committing the ThoughtCrime of revealing a new iPhone to the world. In the most classic example of no good deed goes unpunished, Gizmodo is paying the heavy price for thumbing its nose at Steve Jobs.

Funny, when an Arkansas court finds for WalMart or Tyson, its some kind of hillbilly justice. When a San Mateo, Calif., court greenlights an evidence raid into Jason Chin's house looking for God knows -- excuse me -- Steve knows what, that's alright because it is the enlightenment of California.

Now, how Chin got the phone still seems more than fishy. Perhaps he plied the unsuspecting Apple employee with that "really good" German beer that led to his "loss" of the phone. Perhaps Chin is culpable in this deal.

Nevertheless, is no one else just a little creeped out by this? Is protecting corporate secrets that important -- to run ram shod over an individual's rights?

It also will force a lot of legacy media to think long and hard about their opinion of the blogosphere. Already the stories are aping similar headlines: are blogger's journalists?

Federal and California laws would appear to provide some shield for journalists and their newsrooms. What if your newsroom happens to be your living room? If Chin worked for the San Jose Mercury, would Apple have made this run and would mainstream media be even more outraged.

In the San Mateo warrant, the computers taken from Chin's house were "used as the means of committing a felony."

Once upon a time, they called that journalism.

However, Gizmodo says it paid for the lost phone -- $5,000 -- and to many legacy media it smacks of the same kind of "checkbook journalism" the purists of the field love to cluck about. TMZ's payoffs and network TV "exclusive" deals -- just National Enquirer techniques of the 1970s redeux.

The Old Grey Lady's on-line has a very interesting take on the cost and potential profit for Gizmodo. Is the lawsuit and associated costs worth the publicity and traffic bump for the previously unknown to middle America geek site?

Only if everyone spells their name right. And, to keep it current, makes a permalink.

One Day Too Many

In entertainment parlance, they call it jumping the shark. Or in Jack Bauer's world, Kim and the Cougar.

Look, I've always loved me some 24. The only appointment TV in our house. My wife, huge Kiefer fan, declared it over tonight.

"They should have stopped it last year," she said tonight as Jack stole the helicopter.

For me, when they sent "the Air Force chopper" after him. Last time I checked, the USAF had none. Yet another infiltration of CTU (is this the most insecure intelligence operation in human history), an EMP blast that didn't cause any explosive damage, there's a dead body stuffed in a wall panel (remember the probation officer from Little Rock - shouldn't he be starting to smell), and just how in the hell (once again) is Jack alive.

It was always the smartest tech and writing. But this year's plot has worn thin.

Copy that.

One Fan at a Time

"Thank you for taking the time to talk to me today."

"I'm just one fan. You don't have to spend time working on this."

Two fans, each wit unique questions or problems. Same solution, however, for each one.

Taking time to talk to them.

It's really easy to stand up at convention back in Tampa and tell the membership of CoSIDA that it was time to change from a speech to a conversation. Having the conversation is what is hard.

You have to believe in the fans and supporters. You have to be willing to be wrong when you're wrong. You've got to be willing to tell them the truth, even when it hurts.

Why in the world do you waste time with that. Because today's angry fan has the potential to become your most ardent supporter. I know it to be true, because it has happened to me and others.

One fan a day. That should be your goal. Solve one fan's problem a day and they will begin to multiply. They will tell their friends. It can be a revolution - one person at a time.

Willing to Laugh

Two sided post. In catching up on The Chronicle, a column by the president of Macalester College, Brian Rosenberg, got my attention with this pull quote:

"The longstanding notion that colleges can carefully control their public image is antiquated."

Reading on, Rosenberg provides a refreshing realization from the top that the top can't command the message. Two thumbs up -- highly recommended read.

This leads me to the YouTube piece referenced. My suggestion is read the column first, then judge the video. And, read the comments -- the proof of the original point.

The public controls your image.

Next iPhone Saga

So my iHog developer forwards the following Gizmodo story about a lost and found future iPhone.

Considering how initially excited we were about MacWorld Australia's April Fool's joke on Flash, calling BS -- and I don't mean Bill Smith -- on Apple rumors comes quickly in this space.

That said, after reading the whole thing, one might believe this is real. However, I am reminded by my more Mac-Centric colleagues that Steve shares only what Steve feels we need when Steve wants to. Therefore, don't get too excited about the feature set on this prototype. Recall it wasn't that many years (yes, years) ago that Jobs said tablet computing was crap.

With sufficient caveats, here are the links -- worth the read for tech folks and the casual social media managers:

This is Apple's New iPhone || How Apple Lost the Phone || Apple Reclaims

By Whatever Means Necessary

One of the core concepts behind our new media strategy is taking the events to where the fans are regardless of platform. So, mobile platforms, traditional platforms, etc -- all running with the same content in methods suitable for the platform.

Perfect example -- last weekend's baseball. The fans will take the best available path. On Friday night, ESPN2 was in town and that cut down our interactive blog participation severely -- just under 600 readers when we've been averaging right at 1,000 -- but Saturday and Sunday were back to the big scores (1,500 and 1,300 roughly, respectively).

But doesn't the TV drop prove the point? You shouldn't have streaming video against broadcast video; no streaming audio in-state against terrestrial radio network.

No -- this overlooks the broader goal. That was still almost 600 Razorback fans who had no other outlet to stay up with the game in real-time (or a considerable number who wanted to have the interaction with the official website and other fans along with their TV watching).

As nature abhors a vacuum and seeks to fill it, fans will utilize the highest "bandwidth" feasible. To repeat, you don't watch on your computer if you have access to a TV, you don't listen on the radio if you could have sat down in front of the tube, you don't follow live stats unless you didn't have enough speed for streaming.

The exception to the rule is the interactive blog. As the person on the keyboard Friday, I can confirm that the majority of those folks were doing both -- watching and typing. Many also comment the rest of the weekend that they are listening and typing.

Interactive isn't the future; it's here.

Dead Man Marketing

In the wake of Tiger Woods' dad commercial, I hear Billy Mays coming from the TV this afternoon. Wow, somebody really screwed up the commercial que.

No, it was a Garden Weasel remix, with an announcer jumping in to update the ad offer and price with a "and hey, Billy, there's more" tag line.

Creepy.

Once Posted, Preserved Forever

All those Tweets, the ones many thought were disposable information.

Well, they will be will be with us forever thanks to a deal announced Thursday with the Library of Congress accepting the archives of Twitter.

That means every Tweet since the start of the system, archived. Forever. 50 million messages.

To read more, well, go to the LOC blog.

Leaving Las Vegas

NAB continues to evolve, and yesterday's sessions no better example. Stan Lee spoke to the convention, and here is a man who's career and reputation is firmly build in the world of legacy media. While officially moved on from Marvel Comics and from the fawning crowd could easily spend his retirement years soaking in the adoration of the masses, he's forging straight ahead into POW Entertainment and doing things like motion comics with Disney. With Reed Richards dexterity, Lee continues to lead his content creation industry.

Last year was eye-opening, personally, to how much an event that officially is the National Association of Broadcasters was adapting to the reality of changing media. Good luck finding that long phrase anywhere -- its NAB Show; sort of like KFC instead of the oh-so-regionalizing Kentucky Fried Chicken.

There's a reason for that -- "new media" dominated the sessions in the Post|Production seminars. Even the videographer and director segments were things like "Directing for the Web".

Presentations about brand management and awareness of brand reputation were particularly relevant to our world here, with the business community embracing after learning some very hard lessons about ignoring the conversation and the on-line community.

Engagement was the buzz word -- companies now sending their staff into chat rooms and on-line communities to represent the brand, posting in the open under their real names and real jobs. No surprise to those who follow this space, but a great validation for those who continue to think that they are the sole arbiters of their institution/team/organization's reputation.

It's a conversation now, more than ever.

And yes, I know I've promised more entries from the sessions with notes relevant for the college sports community. I beg your temporary forgiveness as a very special project cropped up on Tuesday and needed to be engaged. Let's hope for the best.

Happy Happy, Joy Joy

Seriously. There is a ton of positive ahead. I'm seeing the future, and it works.

Just not like the way you are use to it.

Hope to have time in the next day to catch up and on the flight home to digetw some of these notes.

The last two days have been like drinking from a fire hose,

Don't Start Spending Those Savings

I've been in this business for 25 years. I've seen most of the NCAAs media guide and other cost cutting measures.

Let me assure you of one great constant: the budget never goes down.

No color inside pages begat the first phone book size guides.

The 208 page limit begat the lenticular covers and other emboss and foil effects.

And no printed guides to recruits - well, let me just say from right here at the epicenter of video - the National Association of Broadcasters convention - that whatever your printing budget was, it just became your video and digital media production budget.

Flash animations and other cool programing doesn't come cheap - in time, effort or money.

The computer that was just fine to do a printed guide; hardly the power to render video.

Good times ahead. Like I am fond of saying, REM had it right.

Its the end of the world as we know it,

And I feel fine.

After all, why do you think I'm here?

Crossing the Rubicon

The NCAA showed a modicum of good reasoning by removing media guides from the permissible materials for recruiting. This preserves the institutions ability to address their needs with their own good judgment.

Tha said, I was bemused by some online commentary lammenting a "change" in the job of the SID.

Let's get something straight:

Sports information is about providing the maximum amount of information to the largest potential audience.

Media relations is about servicing the media.

Neither job exists in a vacuum, and those who try to create pristine vessels for those concepts are overlooking the hard reality.

The job is to message in every possible format - from print to pixel.

Make no mistake, the NCAA has removed the governor off the engine.

The infinite possibilities that lie ahead have little respect for the finite time constraints of the humans involved or the potentiality for incredible inequities resulting from the funding streams of the haves vs the have nots.

Our leaders have let slip the hounds. 

Making it to NAB

Could not see paying e $14.95 for wireless last night, and could not get my travel router to work. Since vie got a little side trip to LA for gymnastics this afternoon, didn't want to waste a day's Internet - do that tomorrow.

The lack of direction keys for serious work is a little annoying.

So far, I've watched more video podcasts from Adobe than ever. Time spent on the plane was more like watching TV - PBS for computer - and the experience is great.

I can see how iPad becomes the major league teaching tool.

Continuing to Vegas

So now I have officially stopped traffic in the airplane as the flight attendants want to know about the iPad.

Since I was listening to a podcast with some interesting tweaks on building iPod/iPad icons, I've got the earbuds in and discover that this notepad has a really cool, realistic typewriter sound that comes along with the typing.

Been a long time since I've experienced the old Smith-Corona sound (I'm not Underwood old, people).

I guess this could become annoying, but it's actually a little comforting and helps block out the ambient noise of the cabin.  Now with you're gen x and not use to that you'd probably find it distracting.

I'm finding that my typing stroke is a little fast for the keyboard when I type my "th" and I'm getting a lot of unintended auto completes.

The spell/auto complete also allows you to touch back to errors.  An Ive that didn't put and auto apostrophe can be touched and corrected on the fly.

On the Road with iPad

Today is the first try at travel with the iPad. Will be interesting to decide if this is a viable platform for mobile computing.

So far, here's the details:

It is a pain in the ass that the apostrophe is not on the immediate shift keyboard, it is two levels down.

Wi-Fi vs 3G - well, let's see how much I really need 3G for content.

Right now, I'm pretty easily on-line as I get ready to board at XNA.

Help for apps is almost non existent - for example, who do you save stories to your AP app to read on the plane? And USA TODAY is just crashing on launch all morning.

Worst of all - blogger doesn't work in safari - the text block won't recognize, so his is typed in notepad and copied in.

More later . . .

Travel Pad

Today is the first try at travel with the iPad. Will be interesting to decide if this is a viable platform for mobile computing.

So far, here's the details:

It is a pain in the ass that the apostrophe is not on the immediate shift keyboard, it is two levels down.

Wi-Fi vs 3G - well, let's see how much I really need 3G for content.

Right now, I'm pretty easily on-line as I get ready to board at XNA.

Help for apps is almost non existent - for example, who do you save stories to your AP app to read on the plane? And USA TODAY is just crashing on launch all morning.

Worst of all - blogger doesn't work in safari - the text block won't recognize, so his is typed in notepad and copied in.

More later . . .

More Inflight

More notes on the iPad.s. USA TODAY still failing, and discovered a work-around for Blogger (choose the HTML entry rather than regular editing and you can get the ipad keyboard to recognize the test entry area.

This flight had GoGo service,  but $7.95 seemed like a lot for Internet access. Plus, you needed an account before getting on, so I could see losing a good deal of the connect time with the registration process.

BBC News pulled down the text of the news stories before I left XNA, so was able to read a lot of things that AP could not save.

Hmm . . . Some Lay's potato chips for a snack, but they only accept credit cards.  maybe that's why we've got wifi - to run the credit card swipe on the beverage cart.

Typing is getting easier; just like it did over about a week's use of the iPhone.

Here's one big asset - in the monstrously cramped space of my seat (a window seat on the two side of a MD80, further wedged by two sleeping passengers - one reclining and one in the aisle seat leaning) I can still type.  Never ever would have been able to even open the laptop here (twitpic to come).

I've joked with fellow SIDs that this was just the rebirth of the Model 100 with e small flat computer and the tiny little alpha only keyboard.

Maybe so.

A Live Stat Plea

Developers:

Please heed the MLB iPad app. Live stats should be, well, numbers. Quick text summary. Updates.

Because if I wanted to see the cartoon balls move around, the Fisher Price base runners, the faux X-Box game animations . . . . . .

. . . . I WOULD WATCH THE GAME VIDEO STREAM.

This is my number one frustration with every single version of the "enhanced" game viewers out there. GameTracker may be a little more elegant, but it is too much Flash, and not enough substance. I have to work too hard through the slick interface to get what I want -- the stats.

And developers, please, PLEASE, hire someone that knows something about the game when you are making your interfaces, apps and widgits.

You know, it's really a little silly to not have total rebounds on your basketball live stats (or individual assists, but you included blocks). Things that those of us who care about stats, again, I'd be watching the game by itself if I didn't care about the numbers.

The dream date? Hitch the human touch of a CoverItLive content blog with the older stat number interface of Total Sports (hey, internet old timers, do you remember that one?).

Now, heading back to MLB . . .

iPad +48

A run of general comments regarding the iPad:

It's too expensive for the limited amount of content available. That said, obviously, that changes rapidly over time.

Generation next will flock to it. Two students were elbowing their way to touch and feel, one declared he was headed to get one because it would become "his day planner".

How many will be left in airplane seatbacks, dropped in toilets and generally lost over the next month as people come to terms with its use?

Until the Flash question is solved, the immediate impact for college athletics may be limted; however, you're all on notice -- I'm talking to you CBS Sports and NeuLion -- that we all ahve about 60 days to figure out how these things will impact college football.

Network TV and other digital content providers (like NetFlix) have stunning presentations on the machine. I've already watched as more ABC content in my lap as I've watched on my wall the past two days. ESPN3, hello?

Meanwhile, get ready to brush up on your HTML (as in HTML5) which looks like the work around until Steve Jobs gets over himself and opens the door for Adobe onto his precious mobile platforms.

As in, all those nifty new Acrobat/Air based media guides -- nothing but the Blue Question Mark of Death, to revive an old school reference. Start warming up those crib notes for transcoding from PowerPoint into Keynote.

Resets on Official Feed

Saying it here since there's more characters than on the @ArkRazorbacks, I've made a follower policy change and I hope no one takes it as some "black helicopter" move.

Since the starting days on Twitter, we'd followed the other schools that had feeds and local media. That's eventually led to a couple of problems. A) Keeping up with the new adds for the media so that we don't inadvertently leave anyone out and B) Where does the school following stop.

To that end, we've reset and moved the following of media and other schools to our personal accounts, and reduced the official feed's followers to just the other UA official feeds, coach official feeds and SEC official feed.

That's not because we don't want to interact with the followers -- we are adding new interactive ways for the fans to talk with us, notably the CoverItLive style blogs, our official Facebook page, new ways to comment and talk to us through the website and looking at rolling out a talk-back Twitter feed as well.

Hope that gives all a clear reason why you're feed may have un-followed today.

More Proof of the Obvious

Real Time Reporting continues to grow as a means of getting out the news, and today being no better example than former Razorback football player Ken Hamblin's tweet this morning:

Former Arkansas safety Ken Hamlin confirms on Twitter (@KenHamlin26) that he's no longer with the Cowboys.

What's interesting here is that the reporter, Brandon Marcello, didn't simply retweet Ken's message, he used it as the sourcing for Brandon's own news feed.

Resume PDF

Occasionally, folks need this as a reference for when I'm speaking to groups. So, here's a link to the current PDF.