Athletes using Twitter has changed sports journalism

            Fans today may not realize how lucky they are in terms of the coverage provided about teams and players compared to the way things used to be. Social media has brought about a tremendous amount of change in the world of sports journalism, and luckily for the fans, but maybe unluckily for players, there will be no going back.

Players are more accessible than ever to journalists and fans

            Most professional athletes are on Twitter. Sports fans are particularly obsessed with their teams players in a way fans of other types entertainment industries just aren’t. Fans always want the most information about their favorite players, to keep up with how a player’s actions may affect the play of the team, but mainly because fans want to feel like part of the team. Fans of musicians don’t come home from a concert of their favorite band saying, “We put on a really good show tonight!” Sports fans always come home from a game commenting about how “We played a great game tonight.” The idea that fans are a part of the team may seem odd to some, but I think it explains why athletes have taken to Twitter the way they have. Athletes clearly like having fans, and a Twitter account allows for as many fans as possible to see what they have to say. Traditional sports journalism doesn’t really allow for writers to follow each individual’s personal life, since they have to write about teams as a whole for the most part. Twitter has somewhat solved this problem, as athletes like to tweet about plenty of aspects of their social and personal lives as well as their professional lives. This can actually help out journalists, if they are doing a story about a player, an interview that may be hard to get because of their team’s traveling might not be necessary, if the player tweets something interesting that the writer can add to the story. This type of added accessibility can benefit sports journalists, as well as hurt them. In Suzanne Cooke’s article, under the part about severed relationships, she writes, “Due to the fact that many journalists are increasingly crossing the lines with their content and level of reporting as they dig for stories, many athletes fear being misrepresented.” This means that instead of keeping personal items off the record, a reporter in modern times feels it necessary to put personal life stories out for the public because the thinking would be, ‘why not, they use Twitter for personal issues, so I can publish what they tell me.’ This negative for a journalist can be offset by a huge positive from the eyes of a fan. The picture above is a tweet from Arizona Cardinals receiver Larry Fitzgerald, telling his fans about a prize contest to be held on Twitter later that night. Before social media, there would have been no way for athletes to do this with fans. This is clearly a benefit for fans, as they can be a part of their favorite athletes day, as well as possibly winning a prize. It’s also a positive for the athlete as a giveaway contest can be a boost for the player’s public image. 

Twitter's general negative attitude carries through to athletes as well

Twitter is regarded by most as one or two things: a good source of news in a world where breaking news is constant and not day to day, or a social media site that includes lots of angry 140 character rants. Athletes are not exempt from the latter idea at all. Perhaps one of the most famous incidents came from last year and the Redskins receiver Jabar Gaffney.  As you can see in the edited image to the left, Gaffney went off with tweets about problems with his wife. There is obviously no advantage what so ever to posting about that type of event on Twitter for an athlete. It can only cause the media to point out what a knucklehead he was being, or for other Twitter users to ridicule him after he posted it. This is what happens every single time an athlete posts something controversial. Media over sensationalizes tweets and fans react harshly on Twitter. For some reason, athletes don’t seem to understand this, and continue to cause trouble for themselves by posting inappropriate things on twitter.  Cardale Jones posted the following tweet during football season. 

This comes from a completely unknown player, a third string quarterback. In no way does it make sense for him to tweet such a thing in terms of his public image, but he did anyway. 

Athletes need to learn the right way to use social media

Athletes need to understand that tweets cannot be permanently erased, and that they will assume responsibility for every single tweet they send out. I know as a fan that Twitter is a greatly appreciated medium for fans because of all the extra content we can get about our favorite athletes, but in order for Twitter to not destroy an athlete’s reputation, they need to learn to limit they content they post.