Public Spokesman Oops

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

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

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

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

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

Gonna have a hard time with the misunderstood option.

Who's Laughing Now?

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

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

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

Reckon that's going to follow around his resume?

You Can't Save Them All

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

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

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

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

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

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

Internet as Media Force Multiplier

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

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

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

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

Google. Message boards. Bloggers.

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

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

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

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

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

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

SNW is Out for NCAA Recruiting Process

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

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

More on the UWD SNW ban for athletes

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

UMD athletes won't be "poking" anymore

You might recognize one of the commentators' names.

Can You Write Shoot in a Crowded Campus?

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

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

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

Are You Sure That's a Ban?

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

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

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

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

At the risk of sounding drudgish -- developing.

Learn from Everyone

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

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

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

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

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

Go forth and tell your good stories.

The New Athletic Department Job

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

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

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

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

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

Text is Dead; Long Live Evasion

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

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

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

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

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

The Feds are After the SNW

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

Goodbye Text, Hello Facebook

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

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

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

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

Again, thanks for joining us on that one.

Long Time in Between

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

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

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

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

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

Kudos to my colleagues.

And While We're on the West Coast

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

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

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

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

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

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

More Stupid Athlete Facebooks

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

Like a Piece of You Has Died

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

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

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

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

New Perspective on the SNW Generation

For those in the business who may be tracking on this blog, I highly recommend this article in New York Magazine by Emily Nussbaum. One of the people who've given up what most of us would consider way too much information had this to say:

"You’ve got to be careful what you say—but once you say it, you’ve got to stand by it. And the only way to repair it is to continue to talk, to explain myself, to see it through. If I shut down, I’m at the mercy of what other people say. "

Nussbaum has captured the perspective of the generation that posts. It is clear. It is something we must understand. Here's the link:

http://www.printthis.clickability.com/pt/cpt?action=cpt&title=Kids%2C+the+Internet%2C+and+the+End+of+Privacy%3A+The+Greatest+Generation+Gap+Since+Rock+and+Roll+--+New+York+Magazine&expire=&urlID=21071886&fb=Y&url=http%3A%2F%2Fnymag.com%2Fnews%2Ffeatures%2F27341%2Findex.html%23&partnerID=73272

It's also a lead jump off the Arts and Letters Daily for today.

Someday, There Might be a Book

As a CoSIDA person, if you ever had any doubts that blogs have become a part of athletics and can drive media coverage, someday in the future when this all sorts out, I will have a story or two to tell.

For now, let me add another of my Cassandra warnings: Know your blogs. Check them often. Figure out where the trends are going.

And don't think for a single moment this is just a political/techno/entertainment world problem.

The Google-Plex Strikes

So, you've been clucking your tongue at those youngsters who don't have enough sense to cover their tracks on the internet. Posting all those inappropriate things on their SNW pages.

Until your employer decides to check out what you've been Googling.

Wha?

Consider this an adult (and student) alert -- Google's personalized search will keep track of all your past searches for you. And if you've been looking up naughty (or worse) things during company time, that may come back to haunt you as much as those beer-bong party photos by the fill-in-the-name-of-your-choice team party.

If you have a Gmail account, you may or may not have turned this function on. When you are logged into any Google account -- like the one used to make this blog, for example -- your googling can be more easily tracked. Notice, I said more easily.

If you go to the personal options of your Google account, you can turn this function off and delete any existing current search records. But any past functions will still live on in the Googleplex's stored back-ups.


Don't kid yourself -- they ARE watching.