ESPN’s new policies regarding social media

Ric Bucher mentioned on Twitter today that ESPN is inserting the company between their employees and any social networking sites. The details of the new policies have since come out, and they’re depressing. Here’s a few examples:

The first and only priority is to serve ESPN sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content

On the surface, this seems to suggest that SportsCenter anchors can’t mention what they had for lunch, that they just went for a run, or link to fun articles they’ve read, some of the (supposedly) primary purposes of Twitter, because such posts don’t serve ESPN.

If you wouldn’t say it on the air or write it in your column, don’t tweet it

Considering that ESPN falls under the Disney umbrella, this is a pretty strict standard, and limits a ton of topics for discussion.

Avoid discussing internal policies or detailing how a story or feature was reported, written, edited or produced and discussing stories or features in progress, those that haven’t been posted or produced, interviews you’ve conducted, or any future coverage plans

One of the main reasons I follow the handful of celebrities that I do is to get a “behind the scenes” look at their lives. Here that goes right out the window.

Steer clear of engaging in dialogue that defends your work against those who challenge it and do not engage in media criticism or disparage colleagues or competitors

People in the media tend to have some of the most interesting, well-informed opinions on other media members, and what little bit they’ve come out so far on Twitter has been tantalizing. It’s a shame that that party is ending.

Damn ESPN for doing this. They say they’ve got technology that will be ready this fall that will directly link ESPN’s site to the personalities’ pages. I don’t see how that’s a consolation. What’s really concerning is if other companies, not even necessarily in the media industry, intend to take a similar approach.

Google’s like a newspaper, and not in a good way

This morning I got some coffee at Starbucks. While I was there, I vaguely remembered that there something interesting about the new iPhone and Starbucks’ relationship, but I couldn’t recall the details.

No problem, I’ll Google it.

As you can see, there was a problem: Google’s results are stale.

I gave Search.Twitter.com a shot, and got my answer instantly.

Oh yeah. That’s right. The new iPhone OS 3.0 automatically logs you into Starbucks’ wifi. Thanks, Twitter.

When I hear the classic “Why would anyone care what I had for lunch?” complaint, or “How is Twitter ever going to make money?” I tend to counter with examples like this, and point out that the site is generating real value, and that they could turn on any number of a dozen clumsy paths to cash tomorrow if they were in a hurry (which they’re not).

Let’s go a step further: in the hysterical Daily Show bit aired last week (that I first saw on Scott Orn’s blog), Jason Jones posed the question to Rick Berke, the New York Times’ Assistant Managing Editor: “Why is aged news better than real news?” It’s not hard to draw a parallel between Google and newspapers. The three common defenses of traditional newspapers are:

1. Blogs are largely about commentary, and the commentary is based on content originally gleaned from newspapers. Without newspapers, blogs wouldn’t have content
2. Bloggers won’t ever be on the ground covering wars or doing hard hitting investigative journalism the way a salaried newspaper employee can. Without newspapers, a lot of the work it would take to uncover the news simply wouldn’t be done.
3. Bloggers don’t have editors. They can’t be trusted.*

All three of those defenses are largely true, but don’t address the core problem: Newspapers are still valuable, just not nearly as much as they used to be, because their information is old. The same is true of Google.

Google has an offline version of the entire internet, indexed, and ready to speedily return search results. The cost and intellectual energy associated with keeping up that offline internet must be staggering, and keeping it updated must be a challenge that grows harder every day. That being said, the world is asking for it’s news faster and faster. I’m happy to roll the dice with Twitter search results, clicking sketchy shortened links and triangulating opinions by looking to see if 3-4 people have said the same thing. That’s better than getting irrelevant, year-old news from Google.

Few people are rooting for the demise of newspapers. I heard someone suggest the other day that the New York Times and Wall Street Journal should become non-profits. We need their output, and if it can’t be produced profitably, maybe we should all pitch in. Many people contribute to public television because they prefer its content to major networks that are forced to cater to sweeps week. If Google loses its status as a cash machine, and their innovation slowed, we’d all suffer, too.

Is it such a stretch, though, that, in 5-10 years time, we could be asking Eric Schmidt: “Why are aged search results better?”

* Particularly funny for me, as my earliest memory of an impactful newspaper article was one describing, in detail, the house I was living in at the time. To my naïve surprise, every detail in the was not only inaccurate, but made up out of thin air. If your first memory of a newspaper article was a spiteful list of lies about your house, how much would you mourn the loss of the newspaper industries treasured editors?