Grounded In Reality

Few would argue that the Internet and blogs (as platforms) lend themselves rather well to facilitating the ability to share personal perspective. So, in that spirit, we’ve got a one-word opinion of Buzz Bissinger we’d like to share: blowhard.

If you haven’t been keeping up with the latest scandals to rock the sports blogging world, you may have missed the recent HBO special on the role of the Internet in the broader world of sports journalism, society and, well, seemingly everything else in the world. Earlier this week, Bob Costas welcomed Deadspin founder/editor Will Leitch to join what was likely pitched to him as a “panel discussion,” alongside renowned author H.G. “Buzz” Bissinger of Friday Night Lights and (somewhat out of left field, or whatever the appropriate football-related pun) Cleveland Browns wide receiver Braylon Edwards. What ensued on “Costas Now” was an ambush that bared no resemblance to any sort of discussion.

However, somewhere between the venomous expletive-laced tirades of “old-school Buzz” lies infinitely fertile ground for countless discussions relevant to modern media, blogging, the role of the Internet and what it all means for PR, marketing and the like. Instead of launching into a dissertation on the topic, take a look for yourself at some of the very cogent, passionate and revealing sentiments from some of the most popular sports blogs on the Web including Fire Joe Morgan (also featured in HBO segment intro), Every Day Should be Saturday, Awful Announcing and Leitch himself (also here). Mainstream journalists have also latched onto the story from Richard Sandomir at The New York Times to Aaron Barnhart of the Kansas City Star (alas, it’s on Barnhart’s…[gasp]…blog!).

So, take a read and form your own opinion. The number of angles from which can tackle this debate are infinite, but one thing is clear for PR professionals. The writing is (and has been) on the wall. Whether anyone likes it or not, blogs, if not the prevailing new media, represent a channel that cannot be ignored. Of course, we all already knew that. Wonder what kind of week Bissinger’s PR folks are doing today? Talk about an interesting “fly on the wall” situation.

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Steve Bonsignore
GCI Sports

In addition to being writers, the next wave of pro journalists will also be videographers and audio techs. Today’s half-second news cycle is demanding that reporters evolve into multimedia producers who can publish text, audio, and video on the fly. The old school system of deploying multi-person camera crews to cover news is coming to an end. It’s too clunky and slow. Arming reporters with internet-enabled recording tools is the only way publishers can keep up and cover maximum ground (not to mention scoop the average college kid with a camera phone and moblog widget).

In a sign that publishers are adapting, Reuters and Nokia just completed a cool experiment to illustrate the emergence of mobile reporting. Reuters armed several of its reporters with gadgets that make publishing stories from the field a breeze. The centerpiece of the toolkit is the Nokia N95 smartphone – a video-shooting, photo-snapping, GPS-mapping, web-surfing device that also happens to let users email and make calls. Participating reporters were also given a Bluetooth keyboard to crank out text-heavy articles, as well as a microphone and tripod to assist with A/V production.

Check out this video interview with Google’s Vint Cerf to see the toolkit in action. The quality is a bit jittery, but it’s a good example of where things are headed: instant, raw, behind-the-scenes, and comment-friendly.

Next steps for Reuters and Nokia? They are planning to use the kits to teach journalism students about the importance of mobile reporting. Interesting that Reuters didn’t choose to use a multi-media press release to communicate this story.