ESPN: No tweeting about sports for 48 hours

I would much rather ESPN have this policy than what so many companies are doing on social media. For instance, Kmart:

http://jimromenesko.com/2012/12/14/not-a-good-time-to-promote-toys-kmart/

If you operate a company's social media account, and your company does not have a real and personal connection to this story, you need to just go on radio silence for a while until it's an appropriate time to begin posting again. Un-schedule your unrelated tweets and just lay low. You have nothing to add.

If you are a car dealership in Texas or a mayor in Oregon or even a reporter in Florida, no one needs to hear how much sympathy you have for the victims. Let the people who really are affected by this — and that includes an entity like ESPN, which has close proximity to the Newtown shooting — deal with it.

Now, if a major corporation like Kmart has a big warehouse or store in or around Newtown, that's one thing. But otherwise, Kmart has no need to send its "thoughts and prayers" on social media. And the chances of making a PR blunder are huge when emotions are running high.

 

They said they would still tweet breaking sports news stories.

 

If it was such an awful thing to focus on sports, why did they keep airing them? And if you can't trust your employees to communicate appropriately with the public, they shouldn't work in a communications industry.

 

I just read the 300 or so most recent tweets on my timeline. There were two about the shooting. Moreover, even yesterday, by this point, my timeline was back to being more sports than anything else.

 

Reminds me of "Cool Hand Luke" where Luke getting the news of his mother's death is cited as reason to lock him in a 4-foot x 4-foot hotbox for a few days, with only a pot to p*** in. Guy gets news like that, his mind starts thinking about runnin'. "It's for your own good," the Cap'n tells him. Twitter ban for the ESPN staffers' own good, to protect 'em from themselves.

 

+3 8)

 

Exactly.

 

So, they use an abundance of caution? Is that your complaint?

 

Maybe the ESPN no tweet edict was self serving . They did not want to end up with a Bruce Feldman like protest.

 

Did I make a point? I reported the facts.

 

Don't see why this ESPN policy is worth complaining about. Probably a smart thing to do.

My Friday timeline was mostly the tragedy, so the people still posting about sports really stood out. It was as if they had no idea what had happened.

ESPN is such an easy target around here, but each and every one of you still in sports media who wishing to be in sports media would work for them in a second. If you wouldn't, you are a moron.

Saving this one for the yearly 9/11 anniversary "I was in my high school in Alabama!!! We were so SCARED!!!!!!!" and "I was working in Nebraska!!!! We were so SCARED!!!! We had no idea where they would hit NEXT!!!!!!" posts.

 

Tapping the brakes on Twitter use the day of the shooting makes sense and I think a lot of people & business entities did that.

But this is attenion whoring at its finest. If this shooting happened in Colorado there is no moratorium. And if the shooting is 24 hours later, there isn't a 48-hour moratorium becuase that would have overlapped with the NFL schedule. Can't be silent then...

And if you don't trust your employees to use Twitter thoughtfully then management needs to be fired for hiring a bunch of idiots.