Has Twitter Made the Sports Reporter Obsolete?
An NFL star live tweets his own traffic stop. An accidental DM reveals a shocking trade rumor. Instead of press releases, Tiger Woods breaks news about Tiger Woods by having @TigerWoods share a link to TigerWoods.com. These are just a few examples of sports stars bypassing traditional media outlets to tell their stories directly to fans. Athletes and teams no longer just control the message, they can be their own messenger. So what is a sports reporter to do? In an era of real-time box scores and self-created scoops, has the role of the traditional reporter doing locker room interviews and post-game recaps become irrelevant? Two respected and highly engaged sports journalists discuss how the immediacy and reach of Twitter have changed the very nature of their jobs—and how sports media must adapt to the "always on" world.
Presenters
Bruce Feldman is a New York Times best-selling author and has covered college football for two decades, including 17 years at ESPN. He joined CBS in 2011 and covers the sport for the company's broadcast, online and cable platforms.
Bruce co-wrote Swing Your Sword, which was published in July 2011. The book reached number five on the New York Times Bestsellers list. He also is the author of Meat Market: Inside the Smash-Mouth World of College Football Recruiting and Cane Mutiny: How the Miami Hurricanes Overturned the Football Establishment. His articles have been cited in several editions of The Best American Sports Writing, nominated for numerous national magazine awards and he has won first place awards in contests sponsored by the Football Writers Association of America.
Dashiell is a freelance writer and editor who has been blogging professionally since 2006, and writing for internet publications since long before that. He spent more then four years as a editor and contributor at Gawker Media, where he wrote for Deadpsin, Gawker, Gizmodo, and several other realms of the empire. He was the first sports editor at Business Insider, and is currently featured on the early morning news shift at The Atlantic Wire.
Richard Deitsch is a writer and editor at Sports Illustrated and SI.com. He has covered five Olympic Games, NCAA championships and Super Bowls, and worked for nearly every division of SI, including the Swimsuit Issue and SI For Women. His specialties include sports media, women's athletics, and the Olympics. He spent the 2008-09 academic year studying as a Knight-Wallace Fellow at the University of Michigan, where he examined the intersection of 20-somethings and the sports blogosphere.
Deitsch has a B.A. in Communications and Political Science from the University at Buffalo and an M.S. from the Columbia Graduate School of Journalism, where he works as an adjunct professor. He has worked at Sports Illustrated since 1997, after serving as an intern for Sports Illustrated for Kids. Last month, Mashable.com named him as one of the “11 Sports Writers You Need to Follow on Twitter.”
Monday, March 12
