“In five years, Twitter has become an increasingly valuable tool for communication, powerful enough to help spur uprisings in the Middle East that have toppled governments” (Holmes).
Anyone who questions the value of Twitter need only understand the role it has played in the world. Soon, it was a real presence in all areas of popular culture, including sports. Twitter won in the blog category and rapidly expanded into social media (Sagolla). The new company used Austin music festival South by Southwest as a launching point for the service. The group acquired and re-branded, incorporating the 140 character limit so that messages would not be split into multiple texts (Sagolla). “Obvious Corp was born as an incubator with Twttr as its sole project” (Sagolla). The group went through several different demos. The initial idea was that the service could be used to inform people about local events (Sagolla). One of the people in the company came up with the idea of using SMS to give messages to small groups (Sagolla). In early 2006, a podcasting company called Odeo, Inc., located in South Park, San Francisco, was facing tremendous competition from industry heavyweights, and decided to reinvent themselves (Sagolla).
Given the realities of Twitter, it is possible, if not probable, that Twitter, along with other similar forms of social media, could entirely replace traditional sports journalism.įor a social phenomenon that has helped change the face of modern media, Twitter is really very young. To assume that information would be less comprehensive than that provided by a traditional sports journalist is to assume that the follower uses a single tweet to gain information about an event or an incident, which is simply not a realistic assumption. Moreover, while the 140 character format necessarily limits the amount of information that can be conveyed in a single tweet, individuals may use multiple tweets to convey information, and followers can choose multiple sources for the story. Followers may choose to piece together their own interpretations of various tweets to come up with an individual perspective about a story, rather than rely upon any single individual’s perspective. On the contrary, fans of Twitter not only know that the information they are getting is biased, but actually seem to enjoy getting individual perspectives about sports-related issues. On the other hand, Twitter’s appeal is not that it is a neutral source of information. Moreover, people tweeting on Twitter generally lack the objectivity that sports journalists would have about an issue, introducing an untold amount of bias into reporting. Fans of old-fashioned journalism are certain to suggest that Twitter cannot replace the comprehensive coverage that a journalist can provide.
But are countless hours spent online contributing to the demise of traditional reporting? Is the lack of connectedness leading to journalistic failure when the need is less about accountability and more about being the first to break a story? Has the modern sports journalist simply been replaced by 140 characters? These are all valid questions when considering the impact that Twitter has had on sports journalism.
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Pint-sized computers and handheld smart phones have made it easy to bypass conventional media outlets to break news and professional athletes, teams and sports organizations have all followed suit, posting their own messages on Twitter to mixed reviews. The efficiencies of social media have all but replaced the need for beat reporting as digital mediums continue to change the way information is disseminated and received.
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