NCSportsTalk.com - Puck Drops
Email Puck Drops
In the beginning, there was the sports media. Teams and players dealt with the media, the media dealt with the fans, every once in a while a player or two would come out and sign autographs, and that was largely that for the first 100 or so years of sports journalism.
Then, along came Twitter. And the rules of engagement changed in a way no one could have predicted.
As little as two years ago, Twitter was seen as a fad at best, and a useless time-waster at worst. I personally saw little point in posting what amounted to Facebook status updates for the whole world to see. Not only was it a little uncomfortable from a privacy standpoint, but I figured that no one cared what I ate for breakfast, how awful my day at work was, or anything else. More to the point, the people that needed to know such things already knew.
But then social media, and Twitter in particular, took on a life of its own, and the end result is a paradigm shift the likes of which have never before been seen in journalism or in sports. And it's been so quick that the rules of engagement are essentially being set on the fly, sometimes changing from day to day, or even minute to minute.
Hockey player-turned-blogger-turned-reporter Justin Bourne is only a year removed from playing professional hockey, yet even in that short amount of time, he says, everything players ever knew about dealing with fans and the media has been turned upside down.
"Last year was my first year not playing, and in that time I think things have changed drastically just because of Twitter. When I was playing we would get a media prep sheet, and it was just the basics: don't tear apart the other team in the media, the way to answer questions so that everything is basically sterile. They really don't want you to say anything too interesting. Now, I'm sure they have to coach players in a whole different way because of Twitter."
Hurricanes director of media relations Mike Sundheim leads casual discussions for newly-drafted players at rookie conditioning camp in July. Unlike in the past, where the discussion could mostly be limited to what to say and what not to say to the media, Sundheim says that players now need to pay attention to what they post on public social networking sites, and to expect little to no privacy.
"We talk to them about having common sense when they use [social media], and especially who they're friends with on Facebook, because when you're friends with people on Facebook they have access to everything that's on your page and often have the ability to tag photos of you. It gets almost to the point of being a safety concern in some cases, but also obviously an image concern with what ends up there."
Where in the past teams were largely able to ensure that players' communications with their fans were filtered through the media, with the advent of social networking the players and fans can converse directly with each other, sometimes with disastrous results. Just ask Tampa Bay Lightning goaltender Dan Ellis. On August 17, a tweet from Ellis comparing goaltenders to brain surgeons, given their need for specialized training and the danger they put themselves in front of every day, elicited unsurprising results. Ellis fired back at his critics, and within ten minutes the situation boiled over into back-and-forths between Ellis and fans following him.
The danger of a spat like this occurring increases the amount of work team media relations departments have to do, and Sundheim says that while he personally would be in favor of a Hurricanes player establishing a Twitter account and interacting with the fans, ultimately they have to keep their job in mind.
"These guys are professionals, and they go into visiting buildings and have just about everything in the world said to them that you wouldn't believe. It's up to them to be professional and maintain their focus, to play a sport and not respond to those things. It's really up to the player to be responsible, and at the end of the day if somebody reacts poorly it's going to reflect worst on that person as an individual."
Scott Norton and his agency, Norton Sports Management, have been at the forefront of encouraging players to sign up for Twitter. Norton believes that the value of Twitter lies not in its ability to bypass team media relations departments, but rather in putting a human face on players who for years have been largely faceless, with the notable exception of the few superstars that the NHL promotes to no end.
"In hockey, with the exception of Ovechkin or Crosby, the individuals aren't marketed. I think hockey players are by far the most well-grounded and the best people who are professional athletes. It's really a shame, because there are a lot of good stories, there's a lot of good people doing a lot of good things, but really no one ever knows about them. As far as I'm concerned, [social networking] can do nothing but good."
To that end, Norton has encouraged his clients to utilize Twitter for greater societal good, and not necessarily a simple window into the player's private life. This past week, Norton and a few of his clients began a program dubbed "Make My Day Monday," an initiative designed to have players give a helping hand to the homeless and other less fortunate people in their communities. The concept is one of several similar ideas that players and agents have used to publicize charitable works and giving via social media.
But Bourne believes that, ironically, the greater access afforded by social media into players' personal lives could result in more of the boilerplate soundbites that reporters have heard for years.
"We're probably creating more actual boring people. In the old days, when 'the game was bigger than us', you could have a player go answer some questions, then they would go out and tear it up and no one would really know. There was no reporter there with a camera, no one was taking cell phone pics. Now, they're filtering their messages so strongly that there's no release for Sidney Crosby. He's just got to be boring. That's his only option. They're aware that any message they put out there will get out there to a million eyes. I think we are forcing these people to be boring."
No amount of cliches can be too much for players who have been trained since junior hockey to speak in generalities and never give bulletin-board material to the other team. Especially in hockey, where the culture emphasizes the team over all else moreso than in other sports, social media allows players to express themselves in a way that has never been available to them in the past.
With the uncharted territory that social media continues to occupy, and given the opportunities for self-promotion that social media encourages, Norton thinks that teams will continue to crack down on players using Twitter and other forms of social media, and that ultimately the matter may be decided in collective bargaining when the next agreement is up for negotiation in 2012.
"As we get into the new CBAs -- for all the sports -- there will be clauses covering social media. Whether it's they have to go through the team, whether it's the team can have final say, whatever it might be, I see it as something that they will try to address, because other than that it just comes down to freedom of speech. It's pretty difficult to tell a player, especially a player who's in your core players that you're not going to bench or whatever might be, 'hey, don't do this'."
Sundheim, however, says that at least in the case of the Hurricanes, while the media relations staff would need to keep tabs on any potential Tweeters in the Canes' locker room, it's not something the organization dismisses out of hand.
"I don't think that [social media] is necessarily a bad thing. We like social media -- we have our own Facebook page, we have our own Twitter, and I think all these things are good. They're a way to communicate with fans that we hadn't had previously, and frankly it's changing the way marketing works to a certain extent. At the same time, we just have to keep an eye on what players are doing. If anyone decides to start a Twitter, obviously I would have to follow that person and just keep an eye on how it's going. For the most part, I trust our guys. If a guy was going to start something like that, we would trust that he would be responsible with it."
Until the new territory is settled and understood by all sides, teams and players can expect a feeling-out process to figure out where the line should be drawn between a productive amount of information and, in the case of Ellis' situation, a public relations headache. Norton says he impresses on his clients the importance of continuously being aware of what they are posting and not to simply post at will with no regards for the consequences.
"There's going to be the isolated incident, not just in any sport but in any business. But that's why I feel the onus falls on me as an agent, or my marketing team, or whoever it might be, to educate the players on where you go with these things, what you do, what you don't do, the areas you don't get into. Every player that's signed up [for Twitter] I've told the areas to stay away from. You want to find the fine line of bringing the fans into your life, but still keeping the privacy."
A potential flash point in social media is the lack of transparency; Sundheim says that since absolutely anyone can create a social media account pretending to be someone who they aren't, the teams have to be on guard against any fake pages and ensure that what's out there is as accurate as possible.
"The only real direction we've had is a heads-up from the NHLPA to keep an eye on the fake Facebook pages, and frankly that's difficult because it's easy to create a fake Facebook page pretending to be a player and misrepresent yourself. Their concern is basically that it's a form of identity theft, and if those 5,000 people think they're friends with Eric Staal and the fake Eric Staal says something offhand, there's not a whole lot we can do about that. At this point, even working with Facebook to take those things down has proved to be a little bit of a challenge."
According to Bourne, players today have an opportunity that their predecessors would have never dreamed possible. But until the generations of hockey players catch up with the technology available, social media will continue to be an evolving aspect of the media landscape.
"I'm petrified at some point, because I haven't been doing this media thing for a whole lot of time. Growing up playing the game, you just fire back at your opponents. I don't know if it's a certain sensitivity or not, but there's definitely times when I can see myself just having a five-minute brain [cramp] and firing off on about ten people, and all of a sudden I don't have a job anymore. "
As the world of social media continues to evolve, teams, players and fans will all have a steep learning curve to define "normal" moving forward. As the Ellis and Paul Bissonnette sagas proved, there are still some real questions about how much is too much when it comes to posting information on social networking. Ultimately, limits will be set, as they have been in the past with other evolving methods of communication, but when those limits come down the road is anyone's guess.
Until that point, it's likely to remain the free-for-all that Twitter has enabled, and while controversy might not be any more prevalent than it already is in locker rooms around the NHL, the next one might come from an angle no one has any chance to predict.
No comments:
Post a Comment