Issuing season-long credentials for sporting events used to
be a relatively simple task.
Public Relations managers passed out press box, locker room and/or
limited access badges for a handful of regular beat writers, reporters,
television stations and radio stations.
Occasionally, they would hand out one-time passes to smaller
publications from outlying communities, student magazines and newspapers and
national outlets. Without going
into excess detail as to how this worked, the news outlets would submit written
requests to the team or organization, which, if completed correctly and with
the authority of station and newsroom management, would be rubber-stamped by
the team.
That has changed over the last five to ten years, with the
mainstreaming of blogs, internet columnists, and various other types of
self-publishers who write, comment and consider themselves to be experts about
a broad range of individual topics, including sports. This has presented a dilemma for sports franchises and
organizations. On the one hand,
the dilemma is philosophical: what is now considered to be an acceptable news
organization? Is a new blogger
with a large following any less legitimate than a small suburban newspaper that
may be long established but has a diminishing and older readership? If the team considers the blogger to be
simply an uninformed commentator taking cheap shots from the laptop in his
basement, aren’t they doing their team a disservice by NOT granting access so
that blogger can be MORE informed?
The dilemma is also practical: press boxes and locker rooms
have limited space, and especially when teams garner lots of attention, such as
in the playoffs, how do the teams decide who has access and who does not? There is then a third question, which
is about the ethics of credential distribution: does a team that issues
credentials have the right to bar members of the press, especially those that
communicate through new and social media, if they write or report items
unfavorable to the team?
There are several instances that involved this kind of
ethical questions between organizations and journalists, including a highly
publicized incident
between a team and a mainstream traditional media outlet that occurred in the
2004 MLB playoffs. But two even
more recent examples highlight the difficulty inherent in these kinds of
conflicts, and an industry that has been slow to respond effectively and
efficiently to a new media world.
The first such example started promisingly. The National Hockey League’s Los
Angeles Kings have been among the most creative and aggressive early adopters
of new and social media. On their
way to the Stanley Cup Championship this past June, the Kings’ often outrageous
and snarky twitter feed gained rave reviews
for its personality and its willingness to challenge the voice and tone of
typical in-house communication mechanisms. They mix that tone with a more traditional offering of game
updates, collateral offerings and more.
In 2009, recognizing that that they had the ability to create their own
messaging through their team-owned portals, they hired the former Kings’ beat
reporter for the Los Angeles Times, Rich Hammond, to provide written content
for their team website, essentially creating their own beat reporter. Hammond told the regional webzine
insidesocal.com that he was not pressured to follow a party line, and that the
Kings had always told him “to report and write as normal”.
This past summer, however, Hammond felt he needed to part
ways with his role. Hammond wrote
critically about the ongoing NHL lockout in a Q and A with Kings’ forward Kevin
Westgarth that has since been removed from the Kings’ website. The league itself said the post needed
to be removed because as a team employee, he had to abide by the league’s rules
of not discussing the lockout publicly.
Hammond stressed to insidesocal.com that the Kings did not pressure him
at all. Still, Hammond felt he
needed to resign because he couldn’t do the job the way he felt was
necessary. The Kings, to their
credit, thanked Hammond in a statement and said his performance "a
partner in building a new platform for LAKings.com epitomized integrity, work
ethic and vision, and at no time did he waver from his goals and commitment to
his readership." (Hoffarth, 2012).
The team also put up a video tribute to Hammond on their website.
Contrast that with what happened a few months after the
Kings hired Hammond. In 2008, the
New York Islanders and their Public Relations manager Chris Botta parted ways
after he had served the team for 15 years. With the Islanders blessing and financing, Botta started up
a blog called NYIpointblank.com.
The team, which had been in dire competitive straits, benefitted from
the additional attention and from the media void filled by Botta’s blog. In 2009, the team stopped financing the
blog, but Botta kept writing. In
November of 2010, the Islanders revoked Botta’s media credentials, for reasons
that remain unclear. Botta
believes he lost his credentials because he had criticized General Manager
Garth Snow. He quoted the
Islanders’ new Communications Manager, Kimber Auerbach, telling Botta that the
team was concerned that Botta had gone from “publicizing the news, to making
the news.” (Sandomir, 2010). The league declined to investigate or
intervene, incurring the wrath of the Professional Hockey Writers
Association. Botta’s media
brethren that follow the New York Rangers and New Jersey Devils joined the
Islanders’ beat reporting crew in boycotting the league’s 2011 Awards Ceremony
and in refusing to vote for the league’s awards.
What’s interesting in both cases is that the NHL, far more
than the other major professional leagues in the United States, has been at the
forefront of exploring new media and in trying to find different streams to
engage their partners and fans.
But their policies regarding media and how they operate in this stream
is particularly draconian.
Award-winning writer and historian Terry Frei, columnist for the Denver
Post and Vice-President of the PHWA, articulately wrote in a blog post (Frei,
2011):
Our
concern is that this decision, if allowed to stand and become precedent,
signals an end to the league’s agreement that independent and objective
coverage not only benefits its fan base, but the NHL itself.
The PHWA’s position is absolute. The
splitting of hairs about the circumstances of the Islanders’ decision is an
irrelevant waste of time. We ask that the NHL disavow the Islanders’ capricious
decision in this specific instance, but even more important, reaffirm that -–
barring egregious actions that would cause the PHWA to expel a member, anyway
-- PHWA members will be granted access to cover its teams.
Admittedly, the media world has become far more complicated. We can only hope that the NHL and
others who control media access can learn quickly from their mistakes.
RESOURCES
1. Cohen, D. (2009, September 28).
Los Angeles Kings hire former beat writer to cover team. Social Times,
DOI: socialtimes.com
2. Frei,
T. (2011, April 4). New twist in Islanders' decision to revoke credential
from reporter. Retrieved from thepostgame.com
3.Hoffarth,
T. (2012, October 11). Was the NHL about to compromise the integrity of Kings' "insider" Hammond. Inside Socal, DOI: insidesocal.com
4.Sandomir,
R. (2010, November 18). Struggling Islanders revoke blogger's credentials. New
York Times. Retrieved from nytimes.com
LINKS
No comments:
Post a Comment