Drapeau Notes on Gen Y

Continuing with Mark Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service, he gives us some very interesting notes on how Gen Y views the public authority -- for the purposes of this blog, let's say athletic departments.

The youth are very connected, very desirous of giving back to communities, but also very distrusting of authority. That's a challenging combination. On the one hand, young fans who want to support you, yet they are going to be the first to call out any lack of transparency.

He weaves this together with another of his five points -- Web 2.0 and Open Government. Drapeau views it as a cultural shift, and he relates this to the growing desire for community among all.

". . . what was once public relations to an audience now looks a lot like public service to a community. And anecdotally, the new public relations influencers, gurus and tacticians are those who weave 'community' into their work."

Huh. So that whole interactive blogging thing, good. Well, only if you are genuine. Drapeau closes with several points about how public service is a unifier.

I think you win by showing that you care more than other companies, organizations, entities. That caring can come in many forms - thought leadership, great customer service, empowering communities to help themselves, being more transparent about decisions.

Or to distill to one line:

They just want to know that you also care about the people you're selling to and that you're not entirely selfish.

Or to a pithy aphorism, which he points out is original to Gary Vaynerchuk:

Sharing is caring.

Eye of the Hurricane

The last great twitter storm surrounded the Pac-16, and we were collectively amused. That is, if you were not a Big 12 member.

The next great unsourced event is underway with Cam Newton. We see a rush to judgment -- fueled perhaps by fear of the revelations of Reggie Bush -- and real-time reporting is right in the middle.

This is troubling on many levels in the collegiate realm. Today, by laying out an academic accusation, those that could quickly deal with this are put at some jeopardy via FERPA. Nature and the Internet abhor a vacuum, it will be filled.

That said, Auburn has taken steps to aggressively counter, including the athletic director Jay Jacobs and football coach Gene Chizik making strong statements to the media. After last week's NCAA rumors, Newton himself was made available. For its part, Florida, via Urban Meyer, has done the same. Interestingly, Auburn's official feed is only retweeting other media. That should not be read into, however, as their feed has traditionally been promotions based for it's original material. The fact they are making sure message gets out to fan base by retweeting stories shows they are engaging.

There has to be a little understanding of the demand on the media, and all sides are ratcheting up rhetoric. As an example, Chris Dufresne of the L.A. Times is getting hit pretty hard by fans. Dick Weiss with New York Dailey News points out both sides -- noting the FERPA issues and statements from Jay Jacobs -- The people you would expect like Paul Finebaum are in the eye of the storm.

In light of being burned on Farve via paid sources, are national outlets moving faster than normal in ways that are over compensating for that miss, or are we simply in the heart of a new paradigm that will require institutions to have rapid response and monitoring teams that can move quickly.

Again, we are not talking professional sports or professional entertainment -- for that matter, even government crisis events -- where once the problem unfolds there can be rapid reactions. Colleges are both academic institutions and state governing bodies. Legally and culturally, they are not rapid reaction targets.

Before the next Pac-16 or Cam, have you assessed your organization's ability to react at the speed that a university is being forced to move?

Drapeau's Five Cultural Trends

An earlier tweet that now gets some more in-depth review. Mark Drapeau is one of the public sector engagement folks at Microsoft. Not that long ago, we'd have ascribed to him the more hip title of a chief evangelist. He wrote a solid essay on the Five Cultural Trends Shaping Business Communications and Public Service at the end of October. Many of you saw my retweet of CoSIDA News on this.

He skewers the public sector (read: academica/athletics/government) with some pretty strong points.

Large organizations are often out of touch with such changes in the culture.

In his five areas, he hits one that bears closer observation for the college sports world: "Nobodies as Influencers." While Drapeau is thinking very specifically of The Situation and other made for reality stars that lack "talent" as we may have previously defined as important for celebrity, I'm reading something else.

Hearkening back to our general lack of control over our brand reputations, it is hundreds of similar "nobodies" who by virtue of the extraordinary low cost of entry into media that become some our most important clients for information. As Drapeau wrote:

Everybody has the potential to be a celebrity and therefore everyone is a potential influencer.

I found one of the comments on Drapeau's post one of the most important items, and it reminded me about who increasingly is the person of trust within one's life.

We trust the 'nobody' down the street more than any superjock making a gazillion dollars a year because it seems more genuine.

Spoke Too Soon

Yep. This flight had changed to C47; back down the terminal. But, I learn from fellow refugee from Columbia that the original first flight of the day is still on the ground.

Remembering History Class

An important realization today that three of the most valuable lessons I've learned in life came from small parts of one teacher's courses. Anyone who attended Northeast Louisiana from the late 1970s into the early 1990s encountered or knew about H. Perry Jones. An irascible teacher, his classroom exploits were legend. One of his favorites was to have graduate students carry him into class near Halloween in a coffin, from which he would rise in full Dracula costume to hand out his exam.

H. Perry was a western civ instructor, and so it made sense for him to be the first to have introduced the myth of Sisyphus and the great quote of Omar Khyaam. It was in his moonlighting as intro to U.S. that he worked in the legend of taking a message to Garcia.

Jones loved to draw on the board, and in the pre-PowerPoint era, his presentations were epic. Cartoons, stylized text, lists - all assembled on the blackboards in the 10 minute time he had between classes then erased away by the next instructor; in part to be able to use the board but I'm convinced for several intimidated by e master instructor (and showman) that was H. Perry.

Each semester - regardless of Western Civ or U.S. History - at some point he would make reference to his notes and with grandiloquent gestures say at these we the type of works that Omar Khayyam meant when he wrote his poetry; that it was like history itself, the very sands of time, that would disappear once the class was over - the moving hand of History having writ, moves on, Jones would say in his "interpretation" of the passage.

Similarly, when he sensed the students were grinding away in the middle of the semester, he would remind them that they were condemned only in the short term to their own rock of Sisyphus. That life would likely present them with challenges that would be the same eternal struggle. That the beauty of life was both the struggle, and the short period of time walking back down the hill when you are temporarily freed of the burden.

Unless you caught him for U.S. two, you missed the performance of the entire A Message to Garcia - the story of the president sending his man Rowan into Cuba to contact one of the insurgents. A staple of he U.S. Army, Perry brought it alive with his dramatic reading. His voice still echoes, his scratchy Applachian coming out when he bellowed "By the Eternal! there is a man whose form should be cast in deathless bronze . . ." as he performed. You left almost eager to be called upon to not fail, to face that challenge and against all odds and without micromanaged direction carrying the message to Garcia.

Performed. That's the right word for H. Perry. Or maybe, transformed.

Enough to Drive

Shifting gates. Closed paths. Happy shining people. Oh yes, please, I want me some more commercial travel.

Land in the far end of D concourse (coffee now, or later - opt for not carrying scalding water long distance) and get high-number C.

Around the detours for tram loading in D, on to C - as in, crap, this is the one concourse without Starbucks. That's OK, I'll use the old B-C underground connector. Walk the length of C and . . . What tha . . . sealed off like some abandoned mine shaft. Nice.

Settle for brew in C - that was halfway back up the concourse. Sit down at C55 - yep, end of the terminal - and five minutes later, we have a gate change announcement. Back to 33. At least I have two things going for me. A) unlike the lone ESPN-type who managed to get on my plane, I'm still not in Columbia with Holly Rowe and Co. His seat, however, cost the airline a $600 voucher. No one would budge for $400, and one passenger bid it up to $600 (sure, if you'll do it, the exasperated gate agent said). B) After schlepping my 40 pounds of gear and clothes split into these two backpacks for a couple of miles today, no need to ride when I get home.

Notice, when I get home. Continuing to have faith. Even though gate 33 says White Planes, NY.

Travel Fun

Nothing like a long day at the airport, compounded by time change and over sold. Looks like the plane in front of me this morning was oversold to start, and now has mechanical issues. The local staff is short, and the supervisor is way overloaded (I need you to stand at the service center NOW).

Of course, you'd be a little testy too if passengers were self-deplaning. Yep. Just helping themselves to the jetway. Oops. There's one blocking open the gate nine door so he can go back and forth.

I swear, there's the Maya Elliott character from Bronx Beat, complete with pink fleece, in the face of the gate agent.

Oh my, I'm boarding and this should be fun.

Cash for Sports Stories

A.J. Daulereo appeared on the stage at the Indiana University Sports Journalism forum to discuss the payment of a mystery source for the key info that led to the breaking of the Brett Farve story. He was holding the cash -- "more than I'd ever seen" -- before the delivery.

That might infer a moment of angst. That would be no.

While the sports journalism world is shocked, shocked that there is gambling at Rick's, those with a memory for the history of celebrity journalism were not surprised.

Paying for "exclusives" or providing "expenses" to travel to network television shows are standard in today's media world. The National Enquirer, who paid a hefty fee for the coffin photos of Elvis among others, finds itself considered for eligibility for the 2010 Pulitzer Prize.

The coverage and video of Daulereo's talk are very important as a guide to where this heads next. Recall, TMZ is now in the game (the Oklahoma basketball story) or the Gizmodo move over the iPhone4 and this will not go away anytime soon.

Road Weary But Worth It

There are a few things that make travel exciting -- meeting interesting people, seeing new places, great meals in different areas. So far, this one is batting 1-for-3. Missing hotel reservations, bad airline personnel, rough flight connections and one of the most wholly unremarkable plates of ribs ever.

I did have a nice chat with a woman who was visiting in the NWA area. She was from DC and had been at a corporate event (no, not for THE corporate entity in NWA). Her time was spent at Carnall Hall and she had walked around the campus. A lot of the usual things we hear -- gosh, its so much nicer than we thought, etc.

My seatmate reminded me of something really important about what I do these days, and how extremely valuable one-on-one interaction is for our overall efforts. I hear the gnashing of teeth in the background of the mass market mentality. You're wasting your time with one person.

Really?

You know the butterfly effect, yes? You've read The Long Tail. How do I not know that the one person I've talked to -- who swears that even though her only connection to Arkansas was this conference is now going to log in and read the interactive blog tonight -- won't lead to something important in the future for the Razorbacks.

And that's just it -- I don't. She didn't seem like she was just being polite, and was quite adamant to make sure she was remembering the website name. But if she doesn't, I know that several hundred will be there. Taking long periods of time to stay and discuss the game; to get the updates and descriptions.

I do know what happens if I'm not there. We don't have a connection to New York City, or Seattle, or Doha, or Yokosuka. And the positive impressions and time together reinforces the bond that we want. Said it before, say it many times again, I don't want fans for the University of Arkansas; I want friends.

Fans come and go; friends stay with you. They do favors for you, and you do them in return. The day what we do gets reduced to pure commerce, to spread sheets of return on investment is the day people wake up and realize college sports are not worth what is spent upon them.

Alchemist! Blasphemer! Communist! I could continue down the alphabet, but its true. How do I know so? Look in the major metropolitan areas. Pro sports dominate because at the highest level of pure sport, the skill and artistry will always trump the amateurs. And we'll pay more to see The Rolling Stones than an up-and-coming plucky band of young Brits, well, because they are The Rolling Stones.

Think I'm wrong? Consider the following. What makes last year's Final Four compelling was the battle between the established men of the game, Duke, and the upstarts from Butler. Was there more sheer athleticism on the court than a regular season game shortly before or after featuring the Indiana Pacers? No.

The connection we gained to both sides -- to the legend of Coach K and the underdogs from Butler -- is what made it compelling. And memorable.

At the end of the day, that's my job. It's why I keep showing up out here on the road, plying the story with whatever the latest technology might be to bring it home, but never, ever forgetting what is the most important part.

Serving as the connection between the Razorbacks and their nation.

Chief Content Officers

I like this concept advanced by Bob Rumpza at PR News Online, and it syncs perfectly with my own experience. Compelling content is the long-term solution to what ails you -- whether it is a legacy journalism enterprise trying to transition into a networked world or a public relations/sports information/sports marketing person trying to have impact.

Good content=traffic

Traffic=advertisers

Advertisers=exchange of green rectangles for your services

Rumpza has several great takeaway quotes in this piece, starting with this one that should be bronzed on every college marketing person's desk:

"And consumers told us that when it comes to online advertising, they prefer content-rich articles and information compared to banner ads, or other online ad techniques."

This is at the heart of what I have been preaching for about a year: integrate your marketing messages into the content. Use "buy now" buttons, stories that explain promotions and giveaways, things that translate the old display advertising of the newspaper days into social exchange.

The other great passage is about the value of the content to the end user:

"As reputation management, marketing and brand-building have undergone transformation, the element that has survived untouched is the ability -- and necessity -- to tell a great story efficiently, yet eloquently, that stirs action and favorability among business people and consumers."

The bold is my emphasis.

Now before I hear back from a bunch of number crunchers that I'm just regurging a bunch of anecdotal to support my positions, I'd like to close by reminding you Rumpza's conclusions are supported by a national study looking into that oh-so-precious demo of the young, affluent and highly educated.

In other words, our sports' programs top boosters -- our alums.

Make The BeeGees Stop

I'm not completely certain, but right up there with double digit unemployment, seismic house of representative changes, and that the next incarnation of Call of Duty apparently incorporates a zombie phase in the Pentagon that involves four dead Presidents, the fact that Starbucks is now featuring the BeeGees and playing their greatest hits over, and over, and over in store IS one of the final si guns of the apocalypse.

Oh, please hurry up person with the records you are dropping off to me here.

Remembering Mr. Dunn

Walter Dunn was that teacher. The one that inspired you later in life that you misunderstood. Maybe detested.

Personally, I never had a problem with Mr. Dunn. Others weren't much for his all-essay tests in American History and Advanced Social Studies. I'm sure it's no big surprise that I relished the open-ended nature of the questions. Usually there were two, maybe three. That's 50 points a pop -- 33 if you got three. High risk, high reward.

I still have my handwritten tests, folded length-ways with your name and date on the right side please, from his classes. One of the moments that made me most proud -- and showed me maybe I was pretty smart and not just a class clown jock-type from the wrong kind of family at the private school -- was when I got bonus points for my answer on World War II. Told later by seniors that they'd heard of only one other person that got bonus points from Dunn.

Enough self-congratulations, the reasons I'm thinking of Mr. Dunn today are two-fold. First, he was not a traditional teacher. Really, very few of the teachers at River Oaks during this period were cookie-cutter educationists. He was a former haberdasher, retired; who loved raising roses with his dear wife of who knows now many years. And, he knew his history. I look back on the old-school lecture and essay question format, and he gifted those who survived his headmaster rules strict attitude with incredible confidence and knowledge.

As for the knowledge, let me spread a little Mr. Dunn. On election day during my senior year, someone in the class asked Mr. Dunn who he voted for today. He looked up from his desk and a disgusted frown moved across his face. With an even more stern tone than usual, he looked the person who asked straight in the eye and said "Don't you ever ask anyone that question again."

He went on to lecture the class. This is America, and you have the right to walk into a private place and make your vote. That is your vote, and don't you ever, ever tell anyone how you voted.

You could tell that a very sacred thing had been disturbed, as if you had decided to wipe down the church alter with urine.

So on this election day, here's to you Mr. Dunn. I've got to go do that solemn, and private, duty this morning.

Go Vote Tomorrow

Seriously. This is the inner history professor lecturing you.

I don't care how you vote tomorrow, but don't come to class (talking to you guys that have your test) or work Wednesday to carp about the results one way or the other unless you have at least put some skin in the game.

A Sharp Dressed Man

ZZ Top may have wrote it, but how many times have we heard that the clothes make the man. Noemie Emery wrote this in the Weekly Standard, making political points against the President as she concludes:

He’s your ideal, and if he fails, it means that the things that you value—the smoothness, the snark, the verbal facility, the elevation of talk as against thought and action, the veneer of worldliness; the right schools, the right clothes, the right frame of reference; the nuance; the sophistication—that these things are, in the real world, not all that important.

And then, of course, neither are you.

Political vitriol aside, how often do we find the same in athletics? And see the ever-so-hard crash of the once triumphant Adonis we build. I've been part of that process -- insider and outsider -- and sensed the impact. Emery's last line is telling, something so obvious that I'd never seen it before. It is why fans get so crushed when they have invested so much in a person or team. Many times, we want to see ourselves in them, and we forget, they are playing the games for them -- not us -- at the end of the day.

Oh Sheep, Drop the WiFi

Thanks to Jill Geer on my Facebook page for the heads up to a Peter Shankman rant about the dangers of "Free" public WiFi. Shankman is relating his personal experience with a new plug in for Firefox called Firesheep. It basically allows the user to see anything non-encrypted floating across a public WiFi.

Must read as he describes how easy it is for anyone to steal your passwords and begin to create massive amounts of trouble.

Firesheep is not some wanton script-kiddie black-hat shot at the man. It's a pretty serious move by a programmer named Eric Butler who became concerned about the privacy issue. He made the plug in to reveal the weakness.

I'll confess to having used public WiFi in the past for a quick check in. Not any more. Ever.

Seriously -- read the Shankman story right now.

Don't Forget It's a Conversation

Few things less pleasant than going back through customer service logs when you know there has been a problem. Certainly the case yesterday when no fault to us or our internet provider we lost audio stream.

I know I do the same thing -- "yell" and "scream" at the computer via email. And it's easy to do when you don't think there is a human on the other end of the email.

This is why I am pretty firm about asking fans to not use screen names or handles on interactive blogs, and why I'll be far more tolerant of opinions that seem to come from people with names; Facebook comments being a good example of this, too. If you're that mad and willing to put your name on it -- hearkens back to the old letter to the editor days and the pre-handles days of talk radio.

So I take the time this morning to send each of those very upset -- rightfully so -- fans that had their audio interrupted. Once they are in the conversation with a human, things almost always change. As one person put it:

It's nice to know that my complaints didn't fall on deaf ears...or no ears at all, as is so often the case with internet services.

Indeed.

Case Study in Why Live Blogs Matter

"You're going to do what?"

That's the typical reaction to CoverItLive and other real-time live reporting tools (don't discount Twitter for certain applications) by some administrators and media relations personnel at other schools that haven't tried it. It's often quickly followed by either:

"What good is that going to do?"

And/or:

"That's a waste of time."

Really? In the socially connected world in which we now live, the messaging is micro. It's targeted. It's one-v-one. What better use of your time than to connect with our fans. As I've preached here before, it is about converting fans into friends, going from a brand to a bond. (As an aside, I consider "Brand-to-Bond" a trademark concept, please cite properly -- thanks!)

Today, one of our interns, John Thomas, provides a fantastic example of what the live blog means. He's over at the Billingsly Tennis Courts, dutifully live blogging the ITA Central Regionals.

Huh? He what?

Here was the concept -- one that many SIDs can relate to. You're going to be there all day long. You're going to have very little to do other than keep up with the comings and goings of your team's players. There is too much chaos to run live stats and it's not the NCAA Championships where you'll have demand for all those courts streaming and scoring.

So, I suggested, why not sit by the tournament official (which you're going to likely do anyway) and keep up a live blog of who's going out to the courts and the results when you can get them coming back in. If they use the manual tenders (no umpires in the chairs in the first rounds to operate the scoring system), you can post the occasional "here's the unofficial scores on court X, Y and Z and as we have it A & B are on court X, etc."

OK, say the tennis contacts that will work this weekend. Sounds like fun. And off we go for the weekend.

The image at the bottom is from Day Two - today's blog - is the payoff. One of our European players, Anouk Tigu, is being followed by her dad Sabin from Holland. He was able to ask if his daughter was on the court, and get an answer.

Well, he could have seen that with live stats if you'd cared to set that up, or a live video stream. Yes to the second, and not the same to the first.

I want to belabor this point: Sabin Tigu was able to ask John Thomas how is daughter is doing halfway around the world and John Thomas on behalf of the University of Arkansas was able to interact with Sabin about Anouk.

That's a brand attempting to become a bond with Sabin Tigu.

Live stats posted without interaction -- that's a computer providing information.

Don't get me wrong, live stats have their place, along with that video stream and audio streams. Far too often we let our technology take the place of our humanity.

I see it every week on the football interactive blog -- most of the folks involved cannot reach us in any other way: overseas, military, travelers. They are very appreciative of the effort. You never know where that kindness may lead.

On the technical labor side, let's repeat my number one point about the interactive and live reporting -- you're going to be there anyway. Unless there is a pressing demand for other work (like being on the radio) you can use that time to interact with fans, and help convert them into friends.

At least this morning, I'll bet John's got a new friend named Sabin.

More on College Legal Limits On-Line

The Chronicle's Wired Campus feed provides an interesting review of the legal abilities of a university to discipline students in on-line behavior. It is in relation to the tragedy at Rutgers earlier this month.

I remind again our athletics colleagues of the opinion that as participants in student activities campus has more of an ability to sanction on the grounds they are quasi-representatives of the institution and as voluntary participants in our activities have signed off on regulation.

Thinking Android, Not Blackberry

Curious to hear your feedback on this question: after building an iSpace app, what is next - Android or Blackberry?

One clue overheard on This Week in Tech. Leo Laporte makes the off-hand comment that in spite of improvements lately, a Blackberry "is the phone they hand you along with your ID card" at a job and iPhone or Android "is the phone you'll buy at the cell phone store."

Along with previous posts about the growth in Android platform share in the market via Nielsen Line, consider this further twist off Leo's point. If Android is the one you'd buy for yourself, it is more likely to be a reflection of your personal life. Bonding to the personal social graph is the future for athletic media relations. Again, advantage Android.

One last one: who is your target audience? Business types that might be ticket buyers or boosters or future students (and student-athletes). No big shakes of which phone fits which group.

What is Public Property

You may have read about the mild dust-up on our campus regarding the taping of a U.S. Senate campaign ad by a former Razorback football player who is one of the two candidates in the race. Part of that story line was what is public property and what constitutes an endorsement.

From The Chronicle we get alert to a brewing First Amendment challenge to the University of Kentucky's rights package. The interesting twist that reminds me of the Razorbacks is down in the student paper's coverage:

UK is a state-funded university and owns Commonwealth Stadium, making the venue a public place.

This was one of the items that came up in our events. Read through all the points of view here -- notably that the local newspaper once distributed papers at games but had also been stopped. The student paper seems to be reviving a battle already fought and decided.

A compromise allowed the students fixed locations to distribute, but could not roam the parking lots.

One gets the clear sense from the media coverage that it is far from over. The lawyer for the students tells the local Lexington newspaper:

Jon Fleischaker, a Louisville lawyer who is an expert on the First Amendment, said that prohibiting the distribution of publications at Commonwealth Stadium, which is part of a publicly funded institution, violates the U.S. Constitution.

"Anybody — not just the students — anybody has the right to go onto public property and distribute information," Fleischaker said. And, he said, they don't have to have permission from anyone to do so.

"It's a public facility. It's an open-forum public facility," he said. "I just think a public university ought to know better."

Athletic Director Twitters

Certainly I speak a lot about our own achievements here, and Jeff Long has certainly been a prolific tweet -- his engagement with students and fans over new style NIKE uniforms in the college football season opener gained him some national attention.

However, I'd like to take a moment to point out some kudos for a really nice use of the medium by Miss State's Scott Stricklin. After his Bulldogs pulled off the win at Florida, his tweets touched the three keys to successful engagement.

First, they were informative. His first post-game tweet was:

Team should arrive on campus (at Templeton Academic center) at 1 AM. I'll update as we get ready to leave Fla

And that got updated right before the plane departed.

Second, they provided something a little personal. Two in particular spoke to the emotions of the event:

Gave game ball to @CoachDanMullen postgm. Told team "u don't win cause you're at a special place, you win cause u have special people."

And:

We talk in Ath Dept that our goal is to create great experiences for all Mississippians. Tonight was a GREAT experience!

Through the event, Stricklin brings attention back to some of the core values MSU has been pushing all year. It's not preachy, but it's a nice chance to remind folks that the goals can yield results.

Finally, they were social. In the midst of his props for the team, he gave a retweet to one of his beat writers, Brandon Marcello (yes, as in former NW Arkansas Times/ADG on-line editor):

True. RT @bmarcello: Dan Mullen had Chinese food Wed; fortune cookie read, "You're heading south to experience much happiness."

Clocking 3,600-plus followers, Stricklin has built a nice base with pretty consistent work. He's averaging four to six tweets a day in his messaging, and in a reasonably short time pushed out over 1,100 messages.

From the outside, it appears MSU had put their young AD out front as the primary messenger. In contrast, the department's feed is not far ahead of Stricklin at 3,900 follow but only 262 tweets.

Let's not forget where Stricklin cut his teeth -- sports info.

Hey A Week On the Road Will Do That

Apologies for the lag here -- nothing like the 24-hours of Le Auburn to put a crimp in the blog. And I might add a nice stone bruise from the MINI steering wheel on that 12 hour drive down and back. Working on some new things in the background that should be pretty exciting. Back with more soon.

One Does Wonder

NPR has a provocative piece today about whether it makes any sense to attend journalism school. Talking with faculty and students at Southern Cal's Annenberg School, it does give one pause at items like:

At USC, undergraduate tuition alone reaches $40,000, and, when taken with fees, books, room, board and other charges, a year’s cost can exceed $55,000. These days journalism schools around the country are often challenged to justify a mission that trains students at such a high cost for a collapsing industry that doesn't even require a degree.

Ouch.

Look, this isn't something that hasn't been discussed here (Picking up on NYU's Jay Rosen | John Dvorak's similar rant | And my own takes on creative destruction and a brave new j-world) The Age of Watergate gave us the desire to "professionalize" the education of journalists. H.L. Mencken did just fine without J-School, as did many of the legends of the Golden Age in the 1950s and 1960s.

This is not to say the Annenberg School is sitting still. Say, does this quote in the story sound familiar:

Among Annenberg's new projects: giving flip cameras and cell phones to migrant workers so they can post blog entries about their own experiences.

That's convergence and P.O.V. -- coin of a content driven realm. They quote one of the stars of the USC program, Callie Schweitzer:

"We need reliable journalists who are trustworthy and credible," Schweitzer said. "I look at people on Twitter who build followings; it's because they're reputable."

Bingo -- and heavy on the last four words: it's because they're reputable.

Keep that thought in mind on your own real-time reporting and blogs.

End of Yet Another Era

In a year that's been filled with disappointing endings, today's was a bittersweet realization. Coming out of my son's apartment, I look up to see the Lewis Soccer Fields.

Oh. Yeah, it's about 5:45 p.m. Game time. But not anymore for me. Fayetteville Youth Soccer - no more for the Smith family.

That's about 14 years through our two children, and most of that time serving as a coach. I really enjoyed it, not only for the chance to be Will and Ashley, but also helping bring the sport up from a somewhat niche activity for youngsters to one of the activities.

It also went a long way toward building my love for the beautiful game. When I started with the kids, I was still working a lot with our women's soccer team as heir sports information director. Helped design and build the first women's only field, then stadium, in Division I. The first televised SEC soccer match. First video streaming.

Even in the years after handing off the sport to other SIDs, I still had a hand in hiring two coaching staffs, traveling to England with one of them for our only foreign tour in 2000. Until this fall, I'd been the play-by-play for soccer, either for radio or video steaming.

But through it all, there was the Lewis Fields.

In all the changes this fall, I'd just forgotten. And now the once six-year-old first-touch player as a 19-year-old young man has it first on-his-own apartment overlooking those youth pitches.

Time marches on, but we don't have to like it.

From the Twitterverse

A couple of Chronicle articles catch the eye this week. The first one is about the future of archiving social media, thinking first of the great Library of Congress project with Twitter generally and of the Iranian revolution specifically. Interesting read, and one very telling passage:

Web users have voiced concern that their personal online footprints will be kept open for all to see in perpetuity. As much fun as, say, that drunken tweet from your weekend in Vegas may have been at the time, you may not want a possible employer reading through your indiscretions on the Library of Congress Web site in a few years. The solution may be keeping archives "dark"—that is, restricting archive access to researchers or sealing the records for a set amount of time.

First, you just better assume that your life in Vegas doesn't stay in Vegas anymore, it will live in some form of perpetuity on Twitter, Facebook, Flickr, YouTube, etc. Second, the idea of an arbitrary "dark" gives me a creepy non-FOI feel, or worse, access for those that know how to work (even more worse, can afford to) the system.

The next article was more about professor's use of Twitter, and had some of the usual stereotype comments about the lack of teens and college age using Twitter versus Facebook until the very bottom:

“Now I hear students say, 'Facebook is where I go to socialize, and Twitter is where I go to work,'” Mr. Junco says.

Bingo. Twitter is real-time reporting, just like CoverItLive (kind of), SMS text-messaging (exactly, but costly) or any future short-form burst of info system. Facebook is the social aspect -- Twitter is news.

Social Media Killed the Public Relations Star?

An alert from the front lines and a shameless Buggles reference. On Bulldog Reporter today, a provocative piece on the demise of media relations as we know it. The dire prediction is social media overruns all within two years.

Two years? Could be sooner than that.

Don Bates is the head of the study -- Bulldog has transcribed interview today. Three important nut quotes:

In 10 years, it will all come back around — there won't be distinctions like "traditional" and "social": there will just be "media." Right now, it's not that way — but some people are having a hard time with the distinctions.

Twitter can be quick and dirty and get people to link to you, and the notion of 140 characters linking to a larger story is certainly going to get more popular. But you have to focus on the content and links to the larger story to keep people's interest.

You also have to craft a personality online so people can know you.

Invest the time today in this story. It's far more than those three blurbs.

And On Cue, NFL Weighs In

Missed in the week's work was this supporting tidbit to my earlier comment about On The Media's story regarding licensing of news footage in campaign material. Seems Russ Feingold of Minnesota was trying to make a joke with Vikings footage. Guess what happened next:

The National Football League has thrown a yellow flag at the campaign of Sen. Russ Feingold, saying a newly released campaign ad featuring a snippet of NFL footage was not properly licensed.

Our own mini-tempest about Razorback Stadium not withstanding, I think that only reinforces the point that while Professor Sonia Kaytal's concerns about the potential infringement of political speech via ads is valid, copyright is going to trump.

I have to give props to the quote of the morning on the commercial, posted by Tom Blumer at Media Busters:

The National Football League is whistling incumbent Wisconsin Senator Russ Feingold's campaign team for illegal use of film.

Classic.

Digital Content Rights

A very interesting discussion of a political fight that resembles some of the arguments tossed around last fall when the Southeastern Conference began to enforce new digital copyright regulations. In this case, Fox News has gone to court to recover damages because a political campaign used footage from a show without compensation or permission. On the Media brings the details of the story, and I'd recommend listening to the piece at the embed above. Stay with it to the very end, and you'll hear Sonia Katyal make this point:

(i)f a court decided to rule in favor of FOX would be that suddenly individuals who are making campaign commercials would have to consider licensing all news clips that they relied on, potentially all headlines, potentially all content that drew on news organizations. And the consequences of that would be staggering.

Really, Sonia. Welcome to the world of sports and entertainment.

There are some good arguments regarding how political speech is different, but Katayl admits that musicians often exert their copyright privileges when they are not pleased with a particular candidate using a song without permission.

Hmmm. Sort of like what would happen to anyone else who used digital content without permission.

I fully understand the political angles being worked here. But we're talking law now, and whether you like Fox or not, there is real cost involved in making footage, and lifting it without compensation for a political ad is no different than if a television station decided to re-air highlights in the sports broadcast from another outlet without attribution. Or these days, violated any of the pro sports limits on video. Or, closer to home, the SEC content rules.

Bono can own the copyright to his performance. The SEC certainly has exerted it's position regarding athletic events. Why not a cable news network?

Where Next, Columbus?

OK, so you have your iSpace app. Now what? Assuming you already have a WAP in place, is the next system Android or Blackberry for that costly application development?

Nielsen Wire has some interesting, and conflicting, advice. In the last six months, Android devices have taken the lead. Over time, the installed base of users is still Blackberry.

With Blackberry's renewed enthusiasm for smart-phone market share, the bet may be to go with the tried and true. The RIM market is business types and high-dollar users.

Android (and more important, the Google mothership behind it) may be the future. The easy answer is: Yes, as in, develop all three applications. That might not be an option for cash-strapped budgets or budget-minded rights holders.

Forcing a call from me? I'd hold for three months until we see Q3 numbers and some key announcements from both cell phone makers and telcos. The Nielsen story only reinforces that we are at a tipping point, and it is a coin-flip choice until the trends reveal more.

The only sure thing here -- as WIRED declared last month -- the future is more app, less HTML. Don't get caught up in the hype line of "the web is dead" and think that's a Luddite position that means you really can pack up this social network silliness and go back to serious things.

If Chris Anderson is right -- and hmm, can anyone remember his last supposedly crazy position: The Long Tail -- this reinforces the need to understand: the future is closed (which could tilt Blackberry along side Apple).

Painful Fingers

OK, way off topic, but this Is the time of year when I'm getting these cracked fingertips - somewhat dry skin, maybe, but partially from keyboard pounding. What was the song - I've got blisters on my fingers.

Any ideas to help? It really hurts and makes the speed typing for blogging tough.

Hooray for Fall

Personal side note: when the windows can stay open at night and the Acorns are needed to pad around the house in the morning -- yes!

The Unasked Question

Tying together a series of tweets from Friday, Gallup finds distrust in the traditional or "mainstream" media at an all-time low. Only 43% according to the polling believe the media "report the news fully, accurately, and fairly."

At the same time, Pew informs us of record growth in demographics that many believe had no interest in social media. Nearly half of the 50-64 demo (47%) now frequent social media, and a quarter of the oldest (65+) are on-line. Pew is quick to point out that still pales to the younger cohorts, but considering the 50-64 group represents that younger half of the aging Boomer generation, those are numbers to be ignored at marketer and media peril.

What does it mean? Sea change.

The unasked question for Gallup that Pew infers is this: do you believe social media instead?

How do I make that leap? Based on my own views into the dynamic between the legacy and social media and other surveys that have shown higher percentages for veracity for social graph-based information.

Increasingly, the legacy media is seen as outsider or worse, co-opted insiders. Here's how I explain the Gallup numbers. Tracking backwards, Gallup did not ask the same question regularly over the past decades, but in 1976, faith in the media was at an all-time high of 72%. The next polling was 1997, and the number was down to 53%.

In the 13 years since, that belief figure drops another 10%. Gallup points out in its 2010 survey that believe in all institutions is heading down, so a certain amount of "disenchantment creep" can be in the numbers.

Think for yourself about the last time you were involved in a story that was written or covered by the traditional media. The brick-and-mortar media in particular, who have hard assets at risk and reputations to maintain from the pre-networked era. Was the "whole" story in that account? Were there inaccuracies? Think now about a distant situation, one at which you may know a colleague. Did all the news get into the story? Were key details left out or overlooked? Were certain stories going unreported?

And did you share that lack of veracity with your friends, neighbors or family?

Look, it is hard to separate your personal knowledge of an event -- and its coverage -- from news you read and think, well, what are they not telling me?

Now, what does that have to do with the other two tweets?

For all the faith one might want to invest in the people and their ability to report situations, these other two hoaxes reveal the very real need for that professional filter to remain in place. In the space of a week, social media -- Facebook or Twitter -- led to a series of potentially hurtful stories.

Brooklyn had its first big severe thunderstorm in some time, and an unknown person grabbed a decades-old image of a funnel cloud near the Statue of Liberty and posted it as evidence that the straight-line winds that tore through parts of the city was really a tornado. Media bit, social media bit hard, and a legend was born. Should remind followers here of the Bella Vista tornado hoax.

Soon after, a hoax story spun up that a major earthquake was being predicted on Twitter for California.

So much for unshaking faith in the social side of things, too.

What it means for those of us in a branded media situation -- those that represent institutions and in turn become both media and source -- is that there is the potential for an awesome power. Your social graph wants to believe you, not necessarily the media. At the same time, if you are not learning from the legacy media -- an extreme amount of transparency may be necessary -- you'll find yourself right there on the truthy-ness scale.

As Gallup points out, at least the media is doing better than record low 36% for Congress.

More Silence Than a Moment

I applaud their gesture of the moment of silence today for Tyler Clementi.

Interesting the reactions that have come out of the participatory media at Rutgers, and the outpouring of general news coverage. Google can map that for you with trending topics and key facts. I don't have to look for the Wikipedia entries; I have total faith they are already there.

At the center of it, is a family that is now destroyed by the networked media. The Borg that is our information nexus has consumed first their precious talented boy, and now threatens to do the same with his family.

We won't mean to destroy them. We'll say the investigations into how it happened are necessary, will honor his memory, will make his death have meaning, will bring justice to those who did the deed.

It's all crap. Even sitting here attempting to bring some sense into the broader impact, I feel at best voyeuristic and in my heart, an opportunist using the Clementi's tragedy as an intellectual fulcrum.

Perhaps the silence we need isn't a moment. As Luddite as it sounds, tolerance for sexual preference shouldn't be what we are mourning or considering -- acceptance of the small slivers of privacy left to us by an increasingly limitless world.

I hazard to guess that 20 years ago, Tyler would not be dead. He would be terribly wounded by the actions of his dorm mates -- if they had managed to make a film or video tape of him. But the chances of that happening would be reduced by the lack of stealth of late 80s, early 90s equipment.

His reaction could have been the same to this brutal outing, but the likelihood that anyone beyond the immediate dorm or Rutgers community would have known about it in that pre-network time would be nil. Today, it approaches a virtual infinity.

We have done it to ourselves. Many volunteer for the kind of invasive public life through Facebook, by Tweeting out thoughts, by dropping Four-Square location details. We overshare our Flickr and YouTube private moments, and join with digital companions scattered across the country in on-line games.

In a mad, head-long pursuit of community and belonging, we overlook the way that our new "social-ism" has this dark side. What a rush we get from our networked world, where we can say things, and do things, and be people we aren't behind screen names and avatars. No wonder the comedy cliche rings true -- there are only two business that call their customers "users": drug dealers and computer manufacturers.

Oh we celebrate The Social Network movie coming out this weekend. The sickening irony of that -- Tyler's last words posted on Mark Zuckerberg's great invention. A movie that is fiction, but we will believe it to be true; like so many convinced that Oliver Stone's JFK is gospel. Tyler's feelings weren't virtual; he was face-to-face with embarrassment in the real world.

At the end of the day, the difference between these two talented young men? Mark's still with his pre-college girlfriend, not the high-life Playmates of the movie. He also has about a $1 billion reasons to compensate for the loss of his privacy and the distortions of his real life.

Tyler has a moment of silence. An empty orchestra chair. A grieving family.

Mark -- and all of us digiratti -- get one more thing.

Tyler's blood on our hands.

Very Dark Side of Digital

By now, you've probably heard the story of Tyler Clementi's suicide at Rutgers. How some fellow students web-streamed him in his dorm room. How they've been charged with invasion of privacy. How he jumped from the George Washington Bridge.

Now Tyler's life and circle of acquaintances have become part of the world wide web -- media, bloggers, interested persons -- all battling for scraps of the story.

These cases are hard, like the mom who cyber-bullied a rival of her child until she killed herself. Or the home invasion with cameras by a voyeuristic neighbor in Louisiana.

By law, none of these persons actions can be directly linked to the horrible results -- mostly because the law is dreadfully behind.

The raging battle between the president of the Michigan ASG and an assistant attorney general gives similar pause. Read that one all the way through the three "more story" jumps -- where does political free speech end and personal cyber-bashing begin?

It's a digital world out there kids. Be careful.

Multiple Texts, One Tweet

Has anyone else seen this problem? User account shows only one tweet on-line, and the user thinks he has sent the tweet only one time. However, I'm receiving double, triple, one time quad, text messages out of Twitter to my mobile. No rhyme or reason -- not on RT, not on original, not always 2x or 3x. Some of the tweets in the stream of consciousness being put out only happened one time. Could it be a setting issue? This one account is the only one that is doing this in the last 24 hours.

Have You No Shame?

OK, I understand that many news sites are shameless in their harvesting of information from official athletic department websites,

But my blogs and original content - not press releases emailed to media?

Really?

Am I the only one who thinks this is a problem?

Not Just Sports

While it's pretty easy to argue if you are an arts teacher and you get up at an open mic night at a club that you know there will be people taping you, Melissa Petro of NYC got not one, but two, patrons posting her expose that in her younger days she was, in her own words, "a sex worker." The New York Daily News is all over the story.

A change of pace from the past sports-oriented, gee, I didn't realize someone would be recording this miscues. We do get a classic quote from the bottom of the Daily News story of one what you have to think is soon to be former colleagues:

"If you want to be a teacher and that's your goal, it's stupid," she said of Petro's openness about her past. "If you want to sell books then maybe not - that's her prerogative."

Self-Fulfilling Prophecy?

According to e-Marketer, traditional blogs continue to grow in readership. Perhaps not at the speed of social media like Facebook or real-time reporting like Twitter, but the long-form (OK, that's a relative term) is judged as having opinion impact.

There are some very interesting numbers in the article, and on a sense level, I believe it to be a good policy to increase the amount of content. I know anecdotal emails and comments support the blogs, particularly for underserviced sports.

My only question is the survey cited isn't a neutral (Pew, Annenburg, etc.) source. Obviously, e-Marketer has some bias.

The Coming Credential Storm

A must-read from CoSIDA regarding the NHL's proposed blogger policies. One of the key drama quotes:

Jeff Little at The Hockey Writers termed it "short-sighted and misguided." At Hockey Wilderness, a blog devoted to the Minnesota Wild, Bryan Reynolds decried "Jim Crow laws for media."

Those there recall I stood on the floor of convention to ask the question, who defines "legitimate" in media, and what happens when that standard has to be taken into a court of law. I have come across this somewhat dated Society of Professional Journalist's position paper from 2000 that talks about the Colorado and MIAA cases.

More from me later on the subject.

Update on Dark Heart

The Department of Defense recycled the first run of Operation: Dark Heart, a memoir of a former intel officer I commented on earlier this month.

A Quarter Century

Indulge me with a story about our town. Those who follow closely know I have resumed my paused career of cycling, in part because we have a very nice trail system here in Fayetteville.  Well, that and the need to regain a modicum of sanity.

Nevertheless, I had determined today I was going for a quarter-century around town - a 25 mile ride - that would require every trail in town, and then a little more.  Presented with a perfect mid-50s day with a steel-gray sky, I was thrilled to hit the road.  Little wheel truing and a shuffle reload, off to the trails.

There is a little bit of everything on the trails. Lake Fayetteville is like disappearing on a paved Robert Frost path through the Ozark woods. It is complete with he oldest cedar (I think) in the state of Arkansas and in what really is the middle of nowhere a National Park Service-type display to the Butterfield Trail.

A stiff wind came with the weather, gloomy to many; glorious to me. I have never been a summer; the bracing chill of approaching winter has always been my friend.

Working through downtown Fayetteville, I discover the connector on the Frisco Trail is semi-completed. An exciting descent down along the railroad tracks of the old Fayetteville station. At the southern end, I decide to make a detour to extend the ride and see something I had only visited once - the Fayetteville Veterans Cemetery.  Child of a veteran, it wasn't just to ride through, but to pay respects. The sign said no "recreational" activities like jogging or bike riding, so I could only coast along the perimeter fence, reading the names of the fallen I could view from the edges.

On the return ride through the deserted parking lots of Dickson Street, I heard a crash and looked to see a young man on the ground.  He looked a bit stunned.  Recalling my own tumble a couple of weeks earlier - no one stopped or asked - I pulled off.  Asking if he was OK, he said yes, but did I have any napkins or tissue; he had cut himself. No, sorry; sure you're OK? Yeah.

As a started off, I decided the least I could do was roll up to one of the restaurants on Dickson and get him some paper towels. The Jimmy Johns folks were accommodating, and I returned to find him semi-staggering toward the edge of the parking lot, a tee-shirt on his chin.  Hey, use the instead. Yeah, great, he said kind of groggy.  That's when he showed the cut, a complete cleaving of his chin meat, wide-open, side-to-side; the classic head first impact slice to the muscle and bone. OK, we've got to get you some stitches. Do you think? Yes, I'm sure.

I noticed his cap for the first time, Flying Burrito, and that there was a location right behind us.  Are you headed to work? Can someone take you to the hospital? He nodded with his napkins on his chin; somewhat surprisingly not as bloody as you'd expect. 

I felt really bad about leaving him to cross the street, but he insisted it was OK. I wished there was someway to have gotten him to the emergency room, but as my wife reminded me later, certainly his co-workers were able to help.

Finishing out the ride, it was hard not to think about his misfortune. Climbing the new incline off Dickson, I came across a group of four men I had passed earlier. They had seemed out of place, but as I worked up the hill one of them said encouragingly, "work the hill, you've got the prime; go man."

Did he say prime? As in "preem", the sprint or hill climb prize within a bike race. I think he did. It got me thinking about this being the longest ride I had made in almost a quarter-century, the 22-years since moving to Fayetteville.

Back in Louisiana, 25 miles was an everyday thing, and every September, the club I helped organize and run would do the League of American Wheelman century rides. Somewhere in my garage, there's an old wool jersey that fit a much younger man with a bunch of those patches.

Funny the things you will see, the people you will meet and the memories they will bring up - if you will just go out into the world a little more. Sometimes travel is right in your own back yard.   

Life Imitates Art

"Facebook reports . . . Twitter confirms" the Burgundy-esque actor solemnly intones in one of the major cell phone companies' ads. The implication is clear -- social media is the source of our news today.

I knew it was just a matter of time until life proved this art, and we get it through one of the most lively of college sports personalities, Mike Leach. Yes, the fired Texas Tech football coach who once disciplined players for using Twitter and became the relentless subject of national criticism in the social media world for banning his team from using the real-time blogging system. The Pirate Coach famously said "a bunch of narcissists that want to sit and type stuff about themselves all the time."

That was so 2009. Here in the future, Leach finds himself the beneficiary of a million Tweets of his pithy comments now that he's a satellite radio sports host -- having been released from Tech as a coach, purportedly for unusual disciplinary methods.

And the center of the on-going will-he-or-won't-he banter around becoming the next New Mexico coach -- that in and of itself a poke in the eye of "nearby" Texas Tech (remember, nothing is really geographically close in the great American southwest).

The story broke on Facebook. Then, OMG kids, was confirmed on Twitter. Both were terrestrial radio station employees -- the Facebook page now closed to non-friends, the KOB-FM tweet now deleted. (Once again -- fun fact, once it's digital, it lives forever -- plenty got copies of the tweet and have preserved them in news coverage -- see previous link). This lead the one of the top traffic sports new media sites, SportsByBrooks, to bite and off the story flew to the legacy media. The Albuquerque Journal joined in with the usual "unnamed sources." KOB on the TV side became one of the first to start to back away.

Since the new media outburst, Leach's lawyer has made the AP and most of the legacy media saying there's no way he's going to UMN, but of course, the story won't die. In part, because according to a subscriber-only story of the Journal Leach didn't convincingly tell the paper he wasn't interested.

And we don't know the whole story why? Because the ABJ has only teased the non-subscriber with the content preview for Google searching of:

Former Texas Tech coach Mike Leach played it coy Friday when asked about Internet-fueled speculation that he will take over University of New Me... MORE
TO CONTINUE READING, SUBSCRIBE NOW

Could the Journal be guilty here of their own little internet fueling? Or just protecting their copyright content.

The saga continues . . .

E-mail Policies

Grambling State jumped from frying pan over an e-mail that hinted students could not use their university-issued accounts for political advocacy into the fire over a staff and employee guidelines. The gist is the student policy was a false rumor, but the FOI-fest which ensued turned up the staff policy. Subscribers can read from The Chron here.

"shall not be used for the creation or distribution of any disruptive or offensive messages, including offensive comments about race, gender, hair color, disabilities, age, sexual orientation, pornography, religious beliefs and practice, political beliefs, or national origin."

On the surface, this looks like a pretty standard block of text used in the late 1990s to enforce campus speech standards. My initial guess is no one had looked at this in years, and did not know the language was there.

Having watched some political festivities from extremely close range here and having lived and worked in the Louisiana higher ed system where the laws address Long-era abuses of public employees, where this started seems legit. You must be careful in political seasons as a public employee.

It did prompt me to take a quick look at the UA email policy for reference. You might double check yours, and any confidential information or proprietary information policies your school or athletic department might maintain.

Next Gen Politics

Frankly, I could care less about Christine O'Donnell's politics.  The surprise GOP nominee in Delaware does have something everyone should be interested in: a chatty past.

From clips surfacing from her appearances on Bill Mahr's show in the late 1990s - complete with off-handed comments about "dabbling" in witchcraft - to later work on the talk show circuit in which she discusses her views on sex, O'Donnell is facing square on her youth.

O'Donnell is a little different in her TV news appearance past.  Cast her as among the first of the Crossfire generation.  She had to work reasonably hard to get on those shows, and then to stay there, she's going to need to be memorable.  That's a charitable way of saying provocative.

Fast-forward 10, certainly 20, years from now.  And the next Christine O'Donnell is explaining why she friended the campus Wiccan guild and I Love The Bud groups on Facebook.

Think it's a stretch? I don't.

The key is will that generation care? They will realize that each and every one of them that got involved in social media will have a lot of posts and likes they may not be so proud of as adults; lots of hard party night photos. Not to mention, more than their share of out of context pics.

I watch O'Donnell on TV as she deftly maneuvers to slip her past comments.  I get a double sense off her. First, outsiders and persons her age in Delaware might not care about her goofy past.  Second, because she doesn't fit the template, and that bothers the establishment.

Who knows, that next generation may already be here.

NHL Staying on Blog Credential Front Line

It's no big surprise that the NHL has an official blogger policy draft floating around, as Penn State's sports journalism program pointed out this morning. NHL member teams have been leaders in this area. The "leaked" memo draft is here. If you missed the details, read more here.

Travel Addendum

"Have your boarding passes out for the agent at the bottom of the stairs," the frazzled gate agent said. "Please make sure you're getting on the right plane. We are boarding two cites at once."

Yep. I'd be careful. Cause if your options are Panama City, Florida, and Flint, Michigan, you darn sure want to make sure you're in the rig plane.

Road Thanks

Thanks to Bill at REI Perimeter, who took the time to look up a bike part for me. That was above and beyond. No thanks to Varsity Gwinnett -- unusually off its game. How about that traffic in Athens? And Atlanta. Yikes.

But above all, thanks so much to the campus motorcycle cop who pulled me over to give me a ticket for no seat belt -- right after I stopped at the perimeter barricade to ask for help on where to part. Gee officer, the reason I had my seat belt off was, well, I just pulled away from that barricade you followed me through AND I was fumbling with the map.

At least he decided to make it a warning, but honest to God I thought he was about to start my visit to Athens for my first football game THAT much more special. So I guess, thanks to him for that.

Well, Ryan Mallett sure made it a great visit. Now let's hope I can than Delta for one more on-time departure in a few minutes.

While I'm dolling out the travel notes -- paperless boarding passes to the iPhone AND on-line check-in -- con mucho gusto gracias. If you aren't taking advantage, get the app for your airlines of use or at least take advantage of the send to your phone option for on-line check-ins. I did this for the first time this trip and it was great. I suppose the down side could be if the power goes out on your phone.

On to the gate.

Digital Meteorologist

I know that many of the followers here are weather geeks as well (shout out to my RadarScope homies). I'm going to recommend the new blog by one of the members of the WeatherBrains podcast, Kevin Selle.

His Digital Meteorologist blog has a very applicable post about the National Weather Service to what I just discussed here yesterday.

In the weather world, what happens in the NWS suddenly did get into social media and the source became the distributor?

Read what Kevin says here.

There's also a pretty good take on Apple's new iTV. Now where have we heard that business about going direct before and be careful about your rights . . . from 2008, and from 2009.

Pournelle's Law

Jerry Pournelle is not a science fiction writer that I had known until he started appearing periodically on Leo Laporte's This Week in Tech. Catching up with old podcasts while on the road, he mentioned in passing his own "Iron Law of Bureaucracy."

"In any bureaucracy, the people devoted to the benefit of the bureaucracy itself always get in control and those dedicated to the goals the bureaucracy is supposed to accomplish have less and less influence, and sometimes are eliminated entirely."

The example Pournelle gave was teachers who worry first about the kids and administrators who worry about the system. His point being the administrators over time will take control and weed out -- through direct action or simple discouragment attrition -- the teachers.

Jerry himself provides his explanation on his email posting from 2006.

What Numbers are Real?

New lines of thought on new media and participation numbers.

In the Nielsen era, ratings were based on a percentage of the TVs tuned to a certain show. Notice, tuned to. Doesn't mean watching, cause you really can tell that. And the audience was extrapolated from a sampling.

So it was a potential audience.

The Audit Bureau provided circulation numbers for newspapers. How many were delivered, how many are subscribers. But the number says the potential total number who could have read a story or advertisement, not how many actually did.

Today, click through is a big factor in advertising, and the numbers are just fractions of the two big legacy measures. In the business, chasing after on-line becomes known as "trading real dollars for digital dimes."

I've heard a lot lately from folks focusing on their Facebook pages and numbers. Oooh, there's 80,000 friends of the page, we should focus there; not on the 8,000 on a Twitter feed or 800 in an interactive blog. Those are made up numbers, but the proportions are not too far off -- they each appear on face value to be orders of magnitude in difference.

Let's run through those. Just like Nielsen and ABC, 80K is the potential audience. Facebook's metrics will tell you the actual participation is much different -- maybe only half the 80K is active user base, then of that maybe 1/4 actually clicked on the item; of that 1/10th liked or commented.

Same applies often to the Twitter feed -- just because 8K follow doesn't mean 8K read.

Why do you put some much value in the smallest of the numbers -- the interactive blogs? Because you know they were there, they took time to participate and more than likely, they lingered (79% at UA) more than one minute on the page to be a part of the event.

So tell me, if only 600 to 1,800 of an 80K Facebook group read/like/comment; if only 800 of an 8K twitter feed take the time to retweet (and it's often more like 80); and 800 were in the interactive blog . . . .

At the end of the day, the numbers of actual participation, consumption of message and integration into the group are really about the same.

When Source Becomes Distribution Network

An interesting collision this weekend put me to thinking about the new role of people and organizations that once served the media ecosystem as sources, and what happens when those sources now have the means to distribute their own information.

Back in the day -- gosh, five years ago -- colleges and universities received notice of a game being on television, and would dutifully give that to the collective media to spread among the fan base.

Today, the moment we receive that information we share it to the media, but also directly to interested parties that follow our websites, real-time distribution networks and social media.

In the past few weeks, the contest to "be first" has led to some interesting events. A mistake by a website caused one of our local media to jump out with the news that an upcoming game would be on a certain network. It wasn't true. And in fact, there was no way it could be due to the league's TV windows and the preset game time.

We knew this, shared it with the media person. OK, retweet. Today, the news finally comes of what the network is -- so in the process of our sending out the info I'm concerned, is this going to look like I'm trying to call this media person out?

The networks and times come out at approximately the same time every week during football season for SEC teams. We have no particular interest in holding that back, or favoring one outlet over another. It's not going to be decided until the SEC says so. The league serves as source to us, and the same thing is going to happen -- as soon as they know, they will tell us and everyone else at once.

So is being first that important anymore? And if the source is also distributing the answers, is guessing to be first before the source makes a decision worth the chance of being wrong?

This echos locally back to the Mike Wise business. Now he claims that he was just making his "fake" tweet as a media gag on his radio show, and got caught by the Twitter Fail Whale -- his near immediate "hey, this is a joke and let's see how many people bite" tweet that he was saying over his radio show did not go out for 40 minutes. (You can listen more about his explanation through On the Media -- worth the click over).

But let's just say that Wise said he was guessing. Or that he had a mystery source. Or read another media account. When the NFL finally puts out their decision -- as source -- they send it through their distribution networks that Big Ben is getting four games.

What if Wise said four? He looks clairvoyant. He'd have bet the future with pocket deuces and come up the big winner. Would anyone really have been challenging him?

In our case if being on X network at Y time was almost systematically impossible, who's to say the media who jumped the gun would be at risk, if the risk proved correct.

Sometimes we get the sense that increasingly competitive media to be first are badgering for an insider edge, but get upset when we say no. The decision will be out when we've got it ready. Instead of respecting that as was the case in the past, the counter is "you're just holding it back so you can be first." No, we're holding it back until we know we're right.

I could have reasonably guessed that next week's football game with Alabama would be on CBS based upon several factors. But until the SEC tells us via email memo that it indeed is a done deal, it's just our opinion. And if we had put that out to fans that we're "pretty sure," we'd be barbecued by the same folks that upset that we're holding back from them.

I know it's a damned if you do/don't dilemma.

Will CoSIDA be Last?

A point of discussion for some years within the organization is certification. The consensus was to not have it during the late 90s, early 00s. Increasingly, the point is moot. Other organizations around athletics are adding certification as a means of portraying themselves as "professional" and separating average skills from "college-level".

Look, I am the first to say I find the entire "wears a good suit" school of hiring -- total appearance over substance -- abhorrent.

Problem is that's not the world we live in, kids.

No offense to their profession when I say this, but the business card form comes across the transom a few weeks ago for one of our assistant equipment managers, who's got some alphabet soup after his name. I ask, and he's "certified" in collegiate equipment manager skills.

So add equipment managers to strength coaches, trainers, counselors, academic support, marketing, certain sport coaching groups, et al, that now provide certification to the members of their organizations.

The time has passed for it in the PR community associated with athletics. There. I said it.

Consider me certifiable.

Creepy Marketing? Maybe.

From Nielsen Wire, a brief on how neuromarketing research was used to promote sales for New Scientist magazine's cover. Briefly, the testing of covers to see where the eye went and what the deep recesses of the brain were lighting up through EEG scans picked the cover that went on to result in a double-digit spike in sales for the month.

On face value, determining what works via brain scan sounds a little creepy. Still, you get past attempts not so much to deceive as to give the answers perhaps a questioner wants to hear with the scanning. Lie To Me meets Scanners.

I've heard a good deal of skepticism on neuromarketing, and a lot of it based in a Luddite reaction.

Tell me something: what's creepier -- a volunteer hooked up to a bunch of electrodes knowingly studied or another "volunteer" who clicked "I Agree" to a EULA that allows complex algorithms to sift through all your searches, personal data and other trending data to deliver you ads that "fit" your predicted preferences.

At least the first volunteer knows it's happening.

Disturbing

Fellow punk rockers -- raise your hand if you still remember slam dancing -- I've go to say perhaps the most unsettling song I've heard in some time is Florence + The Machine "Kiss with a Fist," which I uncovered while pulling down the more current "Dog Days are Over."

The lyrics are beyond inappropriate, but just like quality old school punk, oddly, you can't look away because of the music.

Dark Heart Brings Fiction to Life

One of my all-time favorite movies is Hopscotch. Walter Matthau plays a seasoned CIA operative, that, well, I'll just quote IMDB:

tired of his incompetent colleagues retires and dares them to stop him from publishing an embarrassing book of memoirs

Actually, more like quits because he's not going to accept a desk job, which was a blatant attempt at driving him from the field, again, courtesy of the incompetent boss of covert ops. As the years pass, I love this movie more and more . . . but I digress.

Today, I pick up the newspaper to read: Sources: U.S. seeks all copies of memoir. Apparently one Anthony Shaffer has written a tell-all book, Operation Dark Heart. The book was cleared by Army Reserve, but Defense Intelligence has objected. Oops, too late, the book is already printed.

No problem, the Pentagon offered to buy up the entire 10,000 book first run. (OK, the BBC link is gratuitous; but love to see the "Defence Department").

Sort of like when the CIA operatives go to visit Miles Kendig's publisher in England and threaten to do evil things -- like burn down the warehouse -- to prevent that book's release. Ah, Myerson; I've known you well.

All said, the bumbling efforts of the Pentagon to get and destroy the book are going to make it the most sought after download of the fall season.

If the DIA wasn't being so ham-fisted about it, you'd almost wonder if it wasn't a publicity stunt to get attention for the book.

" . . . this is Eleanor Roooooosevelt. Joe Cutter is tied to a chair in his rooooom . . . "

Seen Today

Maybe I'm missing the point here, but a clip from a recent Division I school job description:

social media experience (professional use of social media outlets)

As opposed to all those amateurs using social media to influence the reputation of our respective teams and brands.

I'll give benefit of doubt that was was meant was someone who during their professional PR career had worked with social media in their strategy. Because if the meaning was the opposite -- we'd like to have very professional attitudes and professional language and professional approaches to a calculating use of social media outlets, including the ever so professional manipulation and spinning of said outlets -- well, ya ain't gettin' what this is all 'bout.

Be genuine. Professional = plastic; 60s Mad Men false. It's that confusing serious with solemn again.

He Ain't Heavy, He's My Blogger

OK, I know when you are the receiving end of EDSBS and the rapier of Spencer Hall, it's not funny at all. But one must give props to anyone willing to pen the line:

THE SATANIC HIRSUTE HIPPO DOG OF VICTORY APPROACHES

As a tag line to a photo of the new Virginia mascot. The lead item of this week's Curious Index.

Prejudices, Reissued

I learn via the Arts and Letters RSS that H.L. Mencken's series, Prejudices, has been reissued as a single collection. I have hunted copies of the series -- collections of the Bad Boy of Baltimore's harshest critiques -- at used bookstores across America.

I've found Mencken fascinating first as the ultimate iconoclast; skeptical but not a cynic. His role in defining the early 20th century culturally is often underestimated.

More recently, I find him a presentist echo for today's chattering class on cable news. As Truman said, the only thing new in the world is the history we don't know, and it is very easy to point backwards to Mencken and say, there, there is the precursor of Bill O'Reilly; of Keith Obermann; of Glenn Beck; of Rachel Maddow.

In some ways yes, but in many, it does violence to the record. Mencken was, to use the now almost passe term, a hater. He was, however, a self-aware hater -- a critic who fully understood he was expressing his personal view of the upper class and those who perceived of themselves as successful.

A&L links to a review on Barnes and Noble's site by Katherine Powers:

Prejudices must be taken at its title's word: the pieces within are the enunciation of visceral, intransigent opinions, often pedestrian in their substance and riven by inconsistency. They are, in a word, journalism.

Oooh. That was, dare I say, a Mencken-esque turn of phrase by Powers.

I use Mencken extensively in my history class, and for those who would like a taste of what a really catty column reads like, pick up a Prejudiced or two. Sahara of Bozart comes quickly to mind, or his missives from the Scopes Trial. Powers reminds of the obituary column of William Jennings Bryan in which Mencken writes of midwestern statesman: a charlatan, a mountebank, a zany without shame or dignity.

Next time you think a Limbaugh is biting, or a Dennis Miller turns an erudite riposte -- spend a little time in the 1920s.

While You Were Starting the Season

Perhaps you were like me and only paid slight attention to the showdown between Time Warner and Disney over the carriage of ESPN on TW's cable systems. PaidContent provides the very, very important backstory for college sports fans (and athletic departments).

ESPN3 gets even wider access and approaches a TV Everywhere system.

For now, you have to hope your internet provider allows it through.

This isn't unlike our own iHog audio strategy -- if you are a subscriber, we should not care what device or mode you use to access it. Same applies here with ESPN3 as a follow-on piece of the TV Everywhere concept.

Read more at Paid Content.

Sharing the Labor on Labor Day

Lots of talk at NAB 2010 among some of the digeratti about "reverse distribution networks." Let's just call them friends.

If your content is compelling, or you have a lot of friends that can help you in a good cause, a very effective and cost efficient way to get the word out is to put your fans to work for you.

See, everyone in the past had distribution lists to media so you could get a story out about an upcoming event. That's still a way to reach certain key demographics and put your facts and details in front of media VIPs.

Facebook and Twitter are the front line. Need to get the word out about, oh, let's say the most recent accomplishment of a star athlete and create buzz about the fact? Create a custom hash tag, share the meaning of the tag with those fans and let them go to work replicating your message.

This past weekend, we toss out to our fans -- with the instructions on what to do -- our new hash tag of #15Mallett. If they see that tag, we are telling them to retweet, repost, like and share.

More Wise Twitter

Courtesy of the Indiana Sports Journalism feed, David Kindred remembers some of the all-time media "jokes" gone wrong.

Along with more insights on the whole sordid affair, a reminder of a classic from the Age of Watergate:

Ben Bradlee, in his time as the Post’s executive editor, once said, "Yes, we print lies. We print what people tell us."

Repurposing and Wallpaper

How do you afford to pay a designer or have the time yourselves to make all those wallpapers?

It is all about re-purposing.

In the past, every printed guide needed a cover. OK, that made sense. But these days, everything is on-line (or so the NCAA and lots of people say/think).

Alright then, what is the master aspect ratio of what you're doing now? A landscape 4x3 at minimum, 16x9 more likely?

Gee, how hard is it to turn those page graphics from your "on-line" media guide into wallpaper that can be distributed to the fans so they can join in.

Keep in mind, internet 2.0 was all about sharing, a conversation. The 3.0 world we live in now takes that two-way street and puts in the back pocket of a fan who not only wants to be involved with you directly, they want to be a part of the program.

So, why not provide them visual message to share with their friends (and potential future students at your school)?

Our plan is to provide an image piece -- adapted from a cover art/schedule card/poster -- and a schedule piece -- often the back cover -- as well as three flexible pieces of art for mobile. We are also doing each one in three aspect ratios -- 800x800 for older computers and two flavors of wide screen/resolution -- 1280x900 and 1900x1200.

So yes, that's a minimum of nine pieces of art for every sport; 19 sports -- OK, you do the math.

That's not including our Game Week wallpaper to give fans a quick shot of info about the upcoming football opponent and a bonus wallpaper based on a great play from the past week's game. Yep, another six (2x3 resolutions) per week in football.

If you want to see the collection, we have a home page just for that at ArkansasRazorbacks.com.

Carving Out Niches

Tomorrow, we'll see a couple of brave experiments come to a first test. They might stumble, but I'm pretty sure they won't fail. More important, they represent the digital future for athletic departments.

Both are related to the rapid encroachment of rights holders -- local, conference and national -- onto campus. Long ago the ability to stream live football left Arkansas to various parties. What we own is anything not game, and anything before kickoff (or after).

OK -- let's create a streaming video pregame. For two years, that was just the same video that went to the main scoreboard screen coupled with the audio of football radio pregame.

Tomorrow, we'll have our own little original programing Countdown to Kickoff. Student run and manned through the RazorVision Academy.

The RazorVision Academy is the completion of a dream I laid out for the first time in 2006 to the J-School here. Battling for the concept through 2008 and 2009, here in 2010 it's about to start paying off dividends with the hiring of our dual-appointment sports journalism production assistant professor and director of the RazorVision Academy.

Along with the pregame show for football, they'll do all home soccer, volleyball, softball and track. That refocuses our professional staff onto other sports and into our specialty productions for on-line recruiting. Tons of real-world experience for students, better production for all.

Original experience programing is the untapped future. Big 10 Network vacuums up everything live, along with many other league-wide deals. So what is left? Get creative. We did a nine-part series this summer "Meet the Coaches" that was half sitdown with our assistant coaches and half mic'd up in practice feature. Fans get to know the assistant coaches. Assistant coaches get to talk about things that are important message points to potential recruits. We get a summer series for RazorVision subscribers when there is no other programing. Again, everyone wets their beak.

The other is iHog bringing out audio from football. This is still the beta in many ways, but I'm putting our money, time and engineering into audio streaming to mobile devices.

But I want to see the game, say the fans. Great. ESPN3 and the SEC Digital Network are going to do that either this year or next. They own the rights. And we're not going to dump very significant money into code and effort for something that may exist in our control for only a year.

Audio, however, belongs to the campus. And that's where our niche will be in the third-screen web 3.0 mobile world.

Take Care with Tweets

Personally, could care less about celeb gossip -- except when they are making new media news. For those more wrapped up in tonight's game or this weekend's openers, Paris Hilton got rung up for cocaine possession last week. No, no says Paris, who ironically was at the nearby Wynne in Las Vegas, wasn't my coke cause it was a borrowed purse.

She admitted yes, my ID; my money; my rolling papers; but no no no no to the blow.

Today, we learn through one of the celeb sites who took a little review time of Hilton's Twitter feed that at the very least, the heiress and former brief Arkansas resident owns a purse just like the one she was arrested with.

Props to Radar for the story here || Jump to the tweet

Let this be a lesson about those spur of the moment TwitPics. One never knows when it may become at least an embarrassment and at worst a legal entanglement.