Ohio State briefly bans tweeting during news conferences

A lot of great points here, but let's look beyond what's good for my paper (which could fold or hand me a pick slip at any moment).

What about what's good for me and my future career prospects?

Building an online brand -- I hate using that term, but whatever -- is important, and Twitter is a part of that. The best way to build a Twitter following is regular updates, including real-time news, notes and quotes.

 

As a consumer of news and a purveyor of news, I can't stand the trend of live Tweeting from press conferences. I follow a ton of people on the Virginia Tech beat, and I get six different Tweets of the same inane quote. "Beamer says Georgia Tech tough opponent." That's just an example, not a real Tweet, but not many of the Tweets that come out of these pressers have the sort of immediate news value that they need to be posted in real time. If a coach announces a suspension? Certainly worth a Tweet. But there's way too much Tweeting for the sake of Tweeting going on at these things. The best reporters know how to Tweet with impact and not clog feeds with a million thoughts of minutae that could be better posted in a blog, fleshed out with perspective.

 

Alabama and Michigan held simultaneous press conferences on Monday. While Saban was talking, he compared Denard Robinson to Cam Newton. An Alabama beat writer (probably several) dutifully tweeted it. Thirty seconds later, Denard Robinson was asked about Nick Saban comparing him to Cam Newton.

So, while the tweet probably didn't help his paper, we certainly appreciated it.

 

I think Ohio State is full of shit and the fact that it thinks it can control the media in this way tells me that it is just another arrogant institution that hasn't learned its lessons yet and will be in trouble again for doing something stupid.

That being said - one of my biggest pet peeves is reporters who tweet during news conferences. Aren't you supposed to be, you know, paying attention, asking questions and taking notes? Isn't your phone supposed to be off for that 20 minutes or so? To me, this is part of the problem - our attention span is about five seconds any more.

Turn your damn phones off, pay attention and ask good, thoughtful questions to get good answers and that will go a lot further towards getting people to read you then tweeting shit like: Meyer "We're all in and we're coming to Ann Arbor to win"

 

That's a novel idea.

 

Longest list ever.

 

The only problem is that your editor would probably reprimand you for not tweeting during the press conference, since it's now more important to tweet, blog, shoot video, etc., than it is to do the job for which you were hired. You know, WRITING.

 

Give people some freaking context. Don't just tweet Meyer saying something insipid like "Braxton Miller has good instincts." Try to get into his head (OK, that's scary). Don't regurgitate shit because the hard-core fans are watching the live streaming of the news conference on the school's web site.

 

Curious for reaction here to the National Sports Journalism Center's take on this.

http://sportsjournalism.org/sports-media-news/bucking-the-ban-ohio-state-revokes-twitter-delay-policy-for-press-conferences/

Ronnie Ramos obviously is entitled to any opinion he wants to express, but I'm peeved because Ramos wrote about the Ohio State twitter situation and how the journalists there should have handled it without every attempting to talk to any of the journalists involved.

I expressed that to Ramos, and in a phone discussion he said since it was an opinion and a column, he didn't need to do any reporting. I disagreed with that.

I think the general discussion of Twitter and its best uses that has grown out of this situation was interesting, but on a sports journalism website, I thought a little more journalism might go into a take on the matter.

Also, I posted a response on the website Friday afternoon that three days later is still awaiting moderation and hasn't been posted. I may be overreacting, but as one of the Ohio State writers in question, I had a problem with Ramos forming an opinion that we were "surprisingly complicit" with the "ban" without trying to get any information himself on what exactly happened.

Doug Lesmerises

 

I agree. I laugh at the reporters who tweet stuff and their own Websites don't even have the information. What is that all about? Newspapers are Twitter's best friend; I don't think it's the other way around but hey, I'm not a consultant (YET until I talk talk somebody into paying me for spewing worthless garbage) so i wouldn't know what I was talking about.

 

Alma ... you are smart person, blessed with common sense. In other words, you are of no value to the newspaper business today.
I like your posts, though. You speak the truth!