Social media's ugly side and bad timing

Two days isn’t a lot of time in the grand scheme of things, but by social media standards, it’s an eternity. Two NFL conference championship games have since passed, bringing with them a kicker called Billy Cundiff missing a game-tying field goal and proceeding to crash Twitter’s servers, then a young wide receiver named Kyle Williams muffing one and fumbling a later punt to allow the New York Giants through to the Super Bowl.

The night before, Twitter was abuzz with the rumor that former Penn State head football coach Joe Paterno had passed. The first tweet I saw on my stream, actually, was from a former college classmate who was in no way tied to the situation or reporting of it. It read simply, “Joe Paterno has died.”

No link. No validation. No clue. Huh?

Obviously this person wasn’t the source, but it had originated from Penn State’s student newspaper, Onward State. The journalism school Poynter recaps how the misinformation got out, here, but here’s the Cliff notes version: Onward State reports it, it gets picked up by CBSSports.com, and within minutes it goes viral. An hour later, and without this having been confirmed by the family directly, they then have to deny the report.

By Sunday morning, it is later confirmed by his family that Paterno has died. So, in hindsight, the original reporting wasn’t wrong by the nature of the outcome, but it was incorrect by its timing and claim at the original time of posting. Onward State’s managing editor had resigned well by then, but the damage was done, and suddenly Onward State became known for all the wrong reasons. Poynter explains AP's stricter sourcing standards and how it didn't get dragged into the mess, here.

Two things I have to take issue with in this whole ordeal. The first is obvious: a family should, under no circumstances, have to spend the final minutes they have with their dying loved one in question having to refute an erroneous media report that said person has died. When that person passes, it should always be left to the family to make that report, and let it out when they see fit. I really don’t think I need to elaborate on that.

The second, and far greater issue as a journalism graduate and former news desk editor of my own school newspaper, is the quest to be first, rather than right, and how that quest can bite you firmly in the ass.

I don’t quite know when it happened, but somewhere along the line the quest of glory for being first and getting your name and publication out as “being first,” did, to some agencies and individuals, become more important than being right. I understand the competitive drive to want to break stories first, and frankly, the rush of digging and investigating for “the big story” is half the reason you get into journalism.

But it takes time to compile and verify those facts when dealing with a big story, get your OK from your sources, editors and fellow reporters the story is in fact, good to go, and then actually post whatever story it is you’re working on. Post it right, great – and if it’s first, then that’s a bonus in my view.

However, in the quest to make “big stories” first, if you get it wrong, you not only end up with egg on your face, smeared in every different direction; you also get the immediate and large scale vitriolic feedback from social media, who sees your every post, your every tweet, the nanosecond it leaves “enter.” And you better be damn well sure what you’re posting on there is accurate because even if you delete it, chances are at least one of your followers will have picked it up and re-tweeted it themselves.

Sports-wise, this has happened in Indianapolis with the Colts pulling a 180 on their local media and firing their head coach, Jim Caldwell, after it was hinted he would stay. Bob Kravitz of the Indianapolis Star explains here. In my direct world of covering motorsports in what’s been a very frantic offseason, there’s been a couple instances when reporters of opposing sites have rushed to post stories without the team, driver, manufacturer or series giving the OK. By the time the right entity posts something, they’re the last one to do so, and it looks bad on them that they’re reporting something “officially” that has been rumored for weeks and either leaked or written by someone who might have broken the embargo (wait, embargoes still exist? )

Those examples, of course, pale in scale to the Paterno outbreak on Saturday night. But the principle is the same. By trying to jump the gun in the name of the scoop, and refusing to let the right entity make the announcement on their own, you wind up risking your name and your publication for the sake of maybe five or 10 minutes. The only glory you get from being first, if you’re right, is being first on Google’s search listings for timestamps. Obviously this weekend, we’ve seen what can happen when you get it wrong.

Being right can mean keeping things in the dark. Since I started my new job in August, I’ve had to withhold sensitive and very key bits of information without posting it. But I respected my sources and respected the entities who gave that to me, and I know that two-way trust street will pay dividends going forward for both me personally, and my organization that I represent.

I certainly have embraced social media, as evidenced by my self-deprecating discussion of how I went from hater to addict on Twitter. I think Twitter can be great for news and networking. But it must be treated with care.

I can’t say it any clearer than this: to me, it is far more important to be right rather than first. I will always work to wait that if I’m not the person entrusted with breaking the news, that the right entity does so and I will let them do just that. It’s something I learned and have worked to implement into my career.

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Another quick thought …

I’m glad I didn’t have a dog in the fight of the respective AFC and NFC Championship games this weekend, which were both fairly exciting. My Green Bay Packers got knocked out last week, putting the kibosh on a 15-1 season but one where the defense had more holes than a good slice of Swiss. Either way, I felt for both Cundiff and Williams in the aftermath, and wish people would look at it as just a game – which it is – and remove the ludicrous death threats or outrageous reactions. If you want to get mad at people, look at the ones who risked things on Wall Street and drove the economy off a cliff in 2008 …

Out for now, cheers. Off to Daytona on Wednesday for my first Rolex 24, and first visit to Daytona International Speedway.

An unrealistic dream

The racing offseason is funny, because every single press release you read is littered with unfiltered optimism, unbridled enthusiasm and an unnecessary amount of spin. That’s what they’re for – to give the impression that driver X, Y or Z is going to “deliver a championship by the pursuit of great race results and maximum exposure and return on investment for sponsors.” Or something of that ilk.

You can’t fault teams, drivers, sponsors or the PR reps for putting together releases in that way. That’s their job. But just once, I’d like to see someone rebel – the closest to irreverent, off-the-cuff releases come from Magnus Racing (which, unsurprisingly, represent the press releases I actually WANT to read instead of slog through thinking how I can rewrite it into a news story) – and create a press release that more accurately describes how driver X got the ride.

This is mostly tongue-in-cheek, but here’s what I’d like to see, just once, in a driver/team announcement press release:

Driver Y brings fattest check, gets seat at Team X

“Well, Team X is announcing Driver Y because frankly, he/she brought the biggest check. It’s not easy to hold back the fact we wanted to announce Driver Z, because he/she actually has the most talent, but we can’t afford to pay him/her and they didn’t want to take a pay cut. Which, to be honest, is totally understandable. Why should drivers have to pay for the privilege of driving when talent should be the ultimate judge of who gets a seat and who doesn’t?

Anyway, that aside, we’re more than happy to take Driver Y’s check, and we really hope that with the right amount of coaching, development, engineering assistance and a little bit of luck, that he/she will be more than a bottom feeder just taking up space and blocking Driver Z, who will probably be lapping them as of lap 7.

We feel Driver Y has the potential to grow – because he/she is woefully out of depth for this series and is only here because of the check they bring. But we anticipate that they will do a great job shilling for the sponsor they bring, will engage their clients (I mean, because who doesn’t know Pay By Touch, Grafiprint or 42 Below?) and maybe, just maybe, will get noticed by one media type who pays attention to his/her development over the course of the season.

“I’m really ecstatic that Team X took my check,” Driver Y said. “When you’re negotiating with teams, certain teams want you to bring a certain amount of money, some greater than others. But I feel that working together, with my check and this team’s potential to improve, we can deliver some results that won’t embarrass either of us.”

“Driver Y doesn’t have the talent of a Driver Z, but he/she does have the potential to grow, and we know Driver Y can do so as long as they keep filling our pockets so we can go racing,” Team X owner said. “We’re not going to be championship contenders. We’ll be lucky to score a top-five. But we know we can end the year better than we are starting, because we’re starting from a place that no one wants to be – stone last with a talentless paydriver. It’s one thing to have a paydriver with talent, but we’re not at that stage yet. We hope that with Driver Y’s improvement this year, we can manage to hire a paydriver with talent next year in a second car.”

We know you’re probably unlikely to read this, but we hope our honesty in our team’s approach continues to entice you going forward. Thanks for slogging along through this press release, and we are kindly available for any media inquiries.