What Lee Jenkins' LeBron scoop says about our industry

Best part in that piece:

Good to see some media outlets won't always surrender to the mighty dollar.

 

It sure sounds like the biggest reason LeBron went with SI and Jenkins was because he truly believed they wouldn't turn into a "look at me" ordeal. Someone mentioned Jenkins doesn't really say much on Twitter, so I suspect that's a big reason why LeBron and his agent were willing to trust him.

It's the perfect example of "we are not the story, we are the story tellers." Although I suspect some folks still won't take the hint.

 

In the words of Dicky Fox, "the key to this business is personal relationships."

I think this story says a lot about the value to those relationships and how both sides trusted the other to wait until the time was right to post the essay. For the James camp not to let it leak, to me, is more impressive in terms of the trust in this relationship, knowing at any point SI could (not that it would) Tweet "we have big news coming."

In an age of Twitter and instant news, I think the importance of relationships, especially to younger reporters, is getting lost. Now it's nowhere on the scale of LeBron James to Cleveland, but I've worked hard on my beat the past couple of years to build that trust with student-athletes, their parents and coaches. Multiple times just this summer, I've sat on the quick breaking news story a couple of days to get the bigger feature on the "why?" to it all or been called in to a coach's office for an "exclusive" with the SID agreeing to not post a press release until my story is online. Those sources trusted me to handle the sensitive story with care and, in return, I trusted them to not share it with anyone else. The end product is a better-written piece that's worth more to the reader because it doesn't just tell them the news, it explains the reasoning behind it. Those stories get 5,000+ more reads online than the quick, breaking element. That can't happen without trust.

As for posting it on SI.com before tweeting it ... That should be the common sense practice in our industry. Unfortunately, it's not. Other than the rare occasion a tweet has to go up in that second to be the one to "break" the story, you should always just type 2-3 paragraphs with the basic information, post that, then tweet out the link. Breaking news on Twitter without a link does very little good for your news organization.

Bring people to your site with quality, exclusive information. Page views = more ad impressions. Ad impressions = better ad sales. Better ad sales = keeping your job longer.

 

Sheridan was there, earlier -- and correct. I'll be so bold as to say that Sheridan wasn't the only one.

You have to respect SI's shroud of secrecy . . . nice job, at that level . . . but SI's not playing the same game as the majority is, anymore. I had two sources I'd SWEAR by, a week ago, that it was going to be the Cavs. That's not a boast. I'm anything but an active reporter. But that's the way it was.

 

Uh, no one has a problem with SI sitting on this news? And didn't James' wife tweet or something 3 or 4 weeks ago a big hint that he was going back to Cleveland, only to have his "people" flatly deny that meant anything, just so the sports media could jerk off for three weeks with endless, stupid speculation?

 

Four years ago, ESPN partnered with LeBron for The Decision.

Today, SI partnered with LeBron to hold and then reveal this news at a time when LeBron and his camp wanted it revealed.

What's the difference?

 

Excellent point.

 

There's a big difference between sitting on news and choosing the time to break it.

 

The difference is that SI didn't create a special, advance-promoted event to announce the news.

 

True.

SI's announcement also didn't raise a dime for charity.

 

The beauty of it was that everything about the LeBron story reporting had become so horribly incremental: breaking news that he hadn't made a decision, breaking news about when an announcement would be made. Jenkins played gin rummy, laid his cards down and won.

 

Exactly. Been in the midst of settling into a new home with my gf, so been watching even less of the WWL than usual, but I can imagine the coverage has been as bad, if not worse, than the Favre watches, Manziel watches, Linsanity or anything else that can be beat into the ground during the 24/7/365 news cycle.