Aside from the ways in which Twitter is impacting sports journalists personally, there were additional ways mentioned in which the platform is impacting sports journalism as an institution. Four of these impacts on journalism seemed more resonant than others: (1) breaking down traditional gatekeeping techniques; (2) transforming the notion of the scoop; (3) blurring the roles of the reporter, whose work is based in fact, and the columnist, whose work is based in opinion; and (4) causing people to read less.
The first of these impacts goes back to the tradition of gatekeeping theory (Shoemaker & Vos, 2009, pg. 22), which was posed in the introductory section of this project alongside the possibility that Twitter represents a new gate in the chain of production from journalist to editor to reader. From a journalist’s perspective, Twitter seems to be that new gate where a larger margin of information can be released to the public, while from an editor’s perspective Twitter seems to be a place where there is no gate or gatekeeping, as information is rerouted by
journalists to avoid these traditional methods. For some of those interviewed, even information on the most recent platform for journalism prior to Twitter—the blog—has to go through the copy desk before it can be posted on a newspaper’s website. However, a tweet is a message that does not have to be vetted, so it can be released immediately. For this reason, Quinn’s (2007) notion of “virtue ethics” seems to be much more important, as journalists’ need for quick
thinking and moral clarity are elevated in a profession that already has thin lines dictating proper behavior on a platform that now allows for an immediate, unimpeded flow of information to the reader (pg. 184). Although, there are surely some news organizations in which editors must approve tweets, for some, that is not the case, which makes Twitter a unique site for news in
terms of journalistic freedom. For this reason, how Twitter is—and continues to be—handled by news organization could serve as a barometer for organizational pressure on journalists.
Another of Twitter’s impacts on traditional sports journalism is in its transformation of the notion of the “scoop.” As Davidoff said, Twitter is the site where the “race” to see who can report something first is taking place. What it means to have a story first has been radically changed, as discussed most extensively by Stephenson. On one hand, it always has been—and still is—important to have the scoop on a story. Who has the scoop is perhaps more visible now than ever, as Twitter makes that perfectly clear. Also, as Stephenson said, because of the many responsibilities of newspaper journalists in this multimedia age, online-only journalists are increasingly the ones who report something first on Twitter. At the same time that the scoop still matters and newspaper journalists may be more rarely scooping stories, the scoop seems to be also somewhat less prestigious nowadays, at least in terms of sustaining the exclusivity given to a journalist who scoops a story over time. In a previous era of newspapers, journalists would have the scoop to themselves for a day before anyone else could report on that same story. Now, journalists have the scoop for a minute, maybe five minutes, and rarely 20 minutes before someone else is posting the same information on Twitter. Though, as Jones pointed out, it is important to have the scoop, so that you can be retweeted by others in a Twitter-era way of sourcing, there is no professional standard for whether to retweet someone else’s scoop or
whether to simply tweet the same information with no source while not necessarily claiming it as your own scoop.
Additionally, Twitter is impacting sports journalism in that it is blurring the traditional roles of the reporter, who deals strictly with facts, and the columnist, who deals strictly with opinions. As Holder described, these two roles have been somewhat conflating for years now,
but Twitter, “blew” that distinction “out of the water.” This blurring seems to be primarily a result of the aforementioned personal aspect of communication on Twitter. Nowadays, readers have a venue where they can not only read a reporter’s account of a player’s performance or contract negotiations or run in with the law, but readers can also ask the reporter what they personally think about said situation. As that venue has become more popular, Holder noted, such requests have reached a level of “expectation” on the part of the readers, where they don’t ask, but expect that the reporter will offer her or his opinion or analysis of a set of facts. This blurring also works in the opposite way, as columnists, who are expected to give their opinions, can now live-blog a game that are watching, giving factual information in real time, before praising or deriding the performance or a player, coach, or team in a later web article or the next day’s newspaper. Perhaps as gatekeeping theorist Bowman (2008) suggests, new media is causing journalists to stray too far from their “core task” (pg. 110), which is that model of
deciding which facts go through the gate and which do not. Whether the conflation of the roles of reporter and columnist is creating such tension in the lives of journalists who are unsure of what type of information—fact or opinion—they are responsible for sharing and whether Twitter is intensifying that tension certainly deserves further consideration.
Finally, Twitter possibly impacts sports journalism by causing people to read less.
Several of the journalists interviewed raised a concern that Twitter is causing readers to consume their news in the same “chicken-nugget” format posed by Poole (2009, pg. 20). Whereas Twitter is dangerous in that it does not allow for the journalist to get into the larger issues involved in a story, it is equally dangerous in that it encourages the reader to not seek out those larger issues. This is further complicated by Jones’ shared experience of her followers often not clicking through to the links in her tweets, only reading the brief less-than-140-character preface to the
link. The reason she knew this was because the readers would message her with questions that had been answered by the story that was linked. The question of why sports fans use Twitter as a source of news is big enough for another project altogether, but the journalists interviewed seem to locate two extremes. One reason seems to be, as located by Jones, the quick, efficient
consumption of small bits of information for someone who wants to know of everything in passing about a sport, team, or player. Another reason, as located by Holder, is the thirstiness for as much information as soon as possible for someone who wants to know everything in detail about a sport, team, or player.