Oct
9
The Washington Redskins have taken a lot of hits in the past few weeks. Two weeks ago, they lost to the Detroit Lions, a team that had been on an 18-game losing streak. The other three games haven’t been much better. And fans and many in the media have laid the blame at the feet of owner Dan Snyder.
This week, a 16-13 win against the Tampa Bay Buccaneers brought the team to 2-2 and should have helped Snyder’s cause. Instead, the team hired Sherman Lewis as an offensive consultant, spurring still more criticism. Snyder’s right-hand man and executive vice president of football operations, Vinny Cerrato, said the NFL assistant and offensive coordinator who last coached in 2004 will provide the struggling offense with “a fresh set of eyes,” but in the main meda and the blogosphere it is being decried as yet another poor decision by the owner.
New blogs quickly popped up for the sole purpose of blasting Snyder and his decisions. A group of fans created the Web site SELL THE TEAM DAN just yesterday. They wore SELL THE TEAM DAN shirts to the Buccaneers game last Sunday, and the shirts were so popular among other fans and this week’s incident so infuriati
ng that the group rushed to put up a Web site, writing, “In order to respond to demand as quickly as possible, we’ve thrown together is VERY RUDIMENTARY page for SELL THE TEAM DAN. We’ll have something else up soon.” Providing T-shirts and a community for Snyder critics, the site shows no signs of slowing down.
Another blog, Snyder Sucks, actually started in August, but the writer had only posted once until Wednesday, the same day Lewis started working. There have been seven posts since then, and this blog too is already selling T-shirts.
Still more sites started the week before, after the 19-14 loss to the Lions, and have been gaining steam. Boycott the Redskins has only one post from the day after the game, but has been linked to by Dan Steinberg’s D.C. Sports Bog and other Web sites. Buy Out Snyder also began after Lions game and has 66 entries on a petition for fans to buy out the team. The Burgundy Revolution started Oct. 1 and now has its own Twitter account, @boycottsnyder.
Someone even joined Twitter yesterday with the username @extraeyes, pretending to be Lewis and providing biting satire of the state of the Redskins, with 19 tweets so far.
While Snyder keeps pushing the company line and hoping fans will ignore the bad press, the Internet is allowing fans to take their disgust and run with it, publicly bashing and banding together against the owner. Though none of these sites is close to seriously threatening the multimillion dollar franchise, Snyder needs to realize that he cannot control public opinion and acknowledge the power and worth of fans and the blogosphere.
But the damage might already be done. The blogs of few disgruntled fans have already started building a coalition against Snyder, proving the World Wide Web’s power as a tool for dissent. I leave you with Redskins legend John Riggins, MVP of Super Bowl XVII. He’s not wearing a Snyder Sucks T-shirt yet, but if he’s on the fans’ side, Dan Snyder should watch out.
Oct
2
Yes, I’m writing about Twitter… again.
Don’t think I’m one of those annoying addicts who tweets 500 times a day, though. In fact, I don’t even have a Twitter account. I find the whole phenomenon a little voyeuristic and creepy.
But Redskins Twackle just might make me change my mind.
Twackle, run by sports marketing and representation firm Octagon, provides feeds of sports-themed tweets. There are Twackle feeds for different sports, leagues, teams and even players. So instead of trolling many individual Twitter feeds searching for Redskins news, you can simply type in RedskinsTwackle.com and find tweets coming from the team, players, media and general Twitterati all in one place. To get the latest news and rumors, you can simply refresh the Twackle page.
As Octagon Digital CEO Jim DeLorenzo told ESPN the Magazine: “If I find a news source on Twitter or some feed that is discussing the Yankees, it’s one thing to be following that one feed. It’s another to be able to go to our Yankees feed on Twackle and see what everybody is saying about the Yankees. You’re increasing the amount of content and data that you can find by a significant amount.”
And you can easily retweet or reply by signing into your Twitter account. There’s even a “Talk Smack” feature to converse directly with other users. By bringing fans, players, team officials and the media together as a team community, it creates a new concept of who creates and spreads news. On Twackle, the public takes an active role in not only disseminating the news but also can interact directly with players, the team and reporters through their tweets. They can even start stories themselves. (See Robert Henson.)
Unfortunately, you can’t take part in the interaction unless you have Twitter, leaving me on the outside. However, I’m rethinking my position. Really, who cares about creepiness if I can know what cornerback DeAngelo Hall is doing tonight? (Watching a movie with his family, in case you were interested.)
Other cool features…
- “Today’s Top Trends” gives the phrases mentioned most in a particular feed that day.
- The “Links” tab directs people to the feed’s most-tweeted links that day.
- You can embed Twackle feeds as widgets for blogs. (Not on WordPress, though…)
While far from a traditional news site, Twackle is at the cutting edge of the online news world. Web sites are pushing to connect with the audience; the more users actively contribute, the more likely they are to come back. And interactivity and community are the most important parts of Twackle. Actually, the users themselves are the most crucial element – they drive the news by tweeting it, retweeting it, analyzing and linking to it, all in quickly digestible bites. Twackle is a truly interactive news experience that could be the next frontier for news on the Web.
Sep
29
Unbeknownst to me, a few hours before I wrote my post on Robert Henson’s Twitter troubles, The Washington Post’s ombudsman Andrew Alexander blogged about the tweets of the paper’s co-managing editor Raju Narisetti, which stirred controversy of their own.
Narisetti, one of top editors at The Post, wrote tweets on healthcare and congressional term limits, personal thoughts that others in the newsroom believed were too opinionated and could hurt the paper’s reputation. One said, “Sen Byrd (91) in hospital after he falls from ‘standing up too quickly.’ How about term limits. Or retirement age. Or commonsense to prevail.” According to Alexander, Narisetti “now realizes that his tweets, although intended for a private audience of about 90 friends and associates, were unwise.” His Twitter account is now defunct.
Sound familiar?
Narisetti’s tweet might seem a far cry from Henson calling booing Redskins fans “dim wits” (especially considering the team’s loss to the Lions on Sunday validating the negative fan reaction). But Twitter, for both, turned from what they considered a semi-“private” social networking tool into a public forum for debate and condemnation. Both, like many of us, forgot the power and scope of social networking sites for stirring and disseminating news.
Perhaps Narisetti should have paid more attention to his own paper’s coverage of Henson’s trying times with Twitter.
Sep
25
It all started with a tweet.
A hometown crowd booed the Redskins last Sunday during a narrow 9-7 win against the woeful St. Louis Rams. Many players responded to the booing after the game, some more calmly then others, but none so adamantly as backup linebacker Robert Henson. He let his frustration out through Twitter: “All you fake half hearted Skins fan can… I won’t go there but I dislike you very strongly, don’t come to Fed Ex to boo dim wits!!” But now Henson’s wishing he could take those 129 characters back.
While the booing itself would have been news in its own right and certainly echoed loudly through the blogosphere, the player responses would simply have been another part of the story had someone not caught Henson’s agitated tweet. Fans responded, he whipped back winning replies. Within hours, the conversation appeared on fan Twitters, blogs, and postgame shows. Henson had went from anonymous benchwarmer to a vilified pseudo-celebrity. The linebacker’s Twitter account is now defunct, taken down reportedly of his own accord. But the multimedia firestorm his off-the-cuff comment spurred will not soon be forgotten.
Multimedia journalism feeds off frenzy such as this. The story became easily one of the biggest of the week, circulating not only around Washington but nationally. But there is a proper way to handle a story such as this one. And I think the coverage got out of hand.
I’m not talking about those twits out there who initially responded to Henson or even those fans who posted the story on their personal blogs. I applaud The Washington Post for its extensive yet fair treatment of the ordeal, and Dan Steinberg, who proved in his front page article and multiple D.C. Sports Bog posts (like this one) that bloggers can be excellent journalists. I also applaud Redskins.com for addressing the issue rather than ignoring it (cough, ticket controversy, cough, crying grandmother, cough.)
But the continual regurgitation, which can be so funny when it’s about Chris Cooley’s shorts, can seem downright mean with an issue such as this. Yes, Henson made a mistake, and yes, he deserved the negative publicity. But does he deserve this nationally televised rant from ESPN personality Mike Greenberg? Does he deserve his new status as villain in the eyes of fans? I think not. We all live our lives constantly plugged into technology. (How many times have you checked your Facebook today?) If you’re like me, you hardly give a thought to what you post. Henson needed to vent, but he did it to an audience of hundreds of fans and media members. It’s so easy to forget that just by pressing a few buttons your opinions become part of the public forum.
So take a look at the Hogs Haven fan blog’s June interview with Henson, as well as Henson’s heartfelt and composed apology, and recognize that there is a normal guy behind the “dim wit” tweets who deserves a little respect.
Sep
18
Wait… Chris Cooley’s what?
Filed Under Multimedia journalism | 2 Comments
Right now you’re probably wondering what Chris Cooley’s Shorts is all about. Take a look at the photo to the right – you don’t find those shorts blog-worthy? Fine, you got me. Though I considered it, this blog isn’t all about the fashion statements of the Washington Redskins tight end. But I am not joking when I say the subject of this blog is all in the name.
Now you think I’m crazy. I see. Let me try again. As you may or may not have already surmised given the URL, I’m Kate Yanchulis. A University of Maryland journalism student and, more importantly, a fanatical follower of the Redskins since birth, I have dedicated this blog to the frenzy of online coverage and multimedia journalism that surrounds the team. And I find no better example than Chris Cooley’s shorts.
You can find Cooley’s shorts here. And here. And here. These three stories mark three straight years (2007, 2008 and 2009) that Cooley’s shorts, in various reincarnations, have set the blogosphere alight. And that’s just the beginning. Google Chris Cooley’s shorts and you will get 131,000 results. I find that amount staggering and I actually read this stuff.
Who provides this news and news like it? Who reads it and what do they get from it? That’s what I want to discuss with this blog. I will of course look at the coverage of the Redskins by major media outlets such as The Washington Post, The Washington Times, ESPN and of course by the Redskins themselves. No blog on Redskins multimedia journalism would be complete without them. But I want to focus particularly on news produced and spread by blogs, fan communities, social networking media such as Twitter and YouTube and even by – especially by – the players themselves. (See Cooley’s own blog at ChrisCooley47.blogspot.com.) Alternative news sources play a vital role in the world of Redskins multimedia journalism. If not for their fascination with a certain piece of clothing, this very site would not exist.
So come back to www.KateYanchulis.com and continue to share in the wonder of Chris Cooley’s Shorts.
