Ohio State briefly bans tweeting during news conferences

I don't disagree with any of that.

 

Do you think they'd have a legitimate case?

 

Alma: I think you are missing the idea that many people who want to watch it cannot, because they are at work, but they can read twitter feeds.

Folks *are* interested in this stuff and cannot always watch/listen.

 

Alma, I could not disagree with you more. Building a Twitter following is no different than building a readership. They can be one in the same. You're doing your readers a service.

I also can tell you Jason does not Tweet a ton of quotes, and I think few do. But what if Meyer were to give an update on the status of a second-string running back? That's a notebook type item that might be worth three graphs. The reporter who gives me that on Twitter is more likely to get me to read their stories more than the reporter who does not.

 

I'm with Alma. When reporters or columnists post items on Twitter, they aren't working for their publication, they're working for Twitter. The idea Twitter audiences translate to newspaper Website audiences and thus revenue is tenuous at best. If out of town fans follow the Twitter feed of, say, your Ohio State beat guy, and many do, how many then read your copyrighted material? Why should they if all the news was on Twitter first?

 

Damn. Thank you Mike. SOMEBODY sees the situation the way that I do. THANK YOU. THANK YOU. THANK YOU.

 

I'll say this: I'm an Oregon grad and follow the football team closely from 1500 miles away. Rob Moseley is the beat writer for the Register-Guard and tweets a lot. Since I've started following him on Twitter, his work on the R-G site is absolutely my go-to spot for Oregon news.

If you are a beat writer, you want to be the person fans think of when looking for news on that beat. If you're not the best source of news on Twitter, you are doing your employer (and yourself) a disservice.

 

Really impressive understanding of Twitter by some of the veterans here.

No, seriously.

Usually discussion of Twitter is not nearly as nuanced.

 

I might be a little late on this, but a friend of mine just alerted me to this thread. Two things:

1) My bigger beef had little to do with Twitter and more to do with Ohio State trying to control the media. All of these big time programs and pro teams are control freaks. There are certain areas they control and we can't stop them, but at some point, we have to take a stand when they overstep their bounds. That was really my point. Twitter happened to be the vehicle to get it there.

2) As for the ongoing Twitter discussion, I used to believe it was foolish to break news on Twitter for the reasons already stated here. I've since changed my mind. I've used Twitter to break Cavs news, then wrote a full story for the website and provided a link to it on Twitter in another post. In an ideal world, you write the story first, then post the link to the full story in the initial tweet. Rarely do we have that luxury anymore. But I absolutely believe building the audience first on Twitter is a key to more clicks on the website. Do I have verifiable numbers to back that up? No, but I'm pretty confident there are many people who have clicked on my stories at Ohio.com that never would've found them without Twitter.

 

It can translate, I think. I don't think live tweeting press conference quotes has much to do with it, though.

I can understand tweeting scoops on Twitter to a certain amount. A press conference is not a scoop. It's a transcript. Benefiting Twitter.

I just feel like newspaper reporters have been so convinced of their own unworthiness in some circumstances that they think giving the milk away for free is the only way to survive. Again, I assure you: It's what Twitter would like you to believe. Sites will die because of Twitter, understand.

Of course a relationship with your readers is important. So build one. RT interesting things. Answer good questions. Throw in an observation on occasion. Make a joke. Create, you know, a relationship. A relationship is not constantly talking at someone with facts. Not in real life. Not on Twitter.

 

Alma is right, but I'd go one step further.

It's important that we change how we think about beat reporting and blogging and our use of Internet space. We need to move toward micro-blogging and using Twitter as a conduit for it. Nearly as fast as you can tweet that bit of breaking news, you can write three or four sentences and get it posted on your own website if you have a good blog system. You can set it up so that the news is automatically tweeted immediately. Tumblr has all the capacity for that. Other hosts do, as well. The key is to put the content in a place that will allow instant posting, instant tweeting, continued revision and advertisements. Flesh out the details in each post as you go through editing. And don't be afraid to tweet the same link multiple times if you've been adding updates.

One format I love for this is SB Nation's "StoryStream," which more or less assembles brief blog posts, including videos and photos, into a single thread for an event. Here's a recent example, from Week 4 NFL preseason games. But check it out during the next major sporting event (perhaps Saturday); it's tremendous and allows for real-time updating on an advertisement-populated page. The links are tweeted as the new posts go up. It's a wonderfully comprehensive way to cover a story as it unfolds.

We need to abandon certain print habits in an online world. What in print is a five-item notebook should be five separate blog posts online. Two- and three-paragraph ledes should be out the door in blogging. Get to the point in one or two sentences. Moreover, anything you think your readers might enjoy or care about should be a blog post. If the starting running back posts an Instagram photo of himself doing a handstand, there's nothing wrong at all with writing a blog post with a headline saying, "Check out Alabama's Eddie Lacy doing a handstand." The old-fashioned smile and move on is over; your readers want this crap. Watch the hits prove it.

Moreover, they don't need an explanation on everything. That handstand Instagram post doesn't need to regale readers with discussion of Lacy's more prominent role this season or big plays last year. It can be as simple as the photo with a sentence or two describing Lacy and explaining that he posted the photo on Instagram.

Social media can be monotized. Don't retweet Lacy's Instagram post, link to your own blog with it. (Yes, I realize there are unresolved fair use issues about social media photos, but most major sites use them these days.)

 

Yeah, if you're not using Twitter to link to your papers' site, you're doing your employer a disservice.

At a press conference, type in the top quotes, send them in to your paper, or post them to your blog on your paper's website and then tweet the link.

Otherwise, what's the point?