The Changing Face of Sports Journalism: Twitter Is The New Medium
Daniel Bolanos
The University of San Diego
The phenomenon known as Twitter has taken hold of American culture and spread like wild fire in a relatively short amount of time. Twitter is a microblogging service created in 2006 through which it's users sends virtual messages, or "tweets," responding to hot topics such as the president's state of the union address to Justin Bieber's possible deportation. Journalism in particular has been completely revolutionized by tweeting, retweeting, and hashtagging. "Recent research presented at the International World Wide Web Conference in May of 2010 suggested that Twitter's uses have begun to fit the definitions of more traditional media, such as websites, newspapers, television, and radio, rather that of social networking sites, such as MySpace and Facebook" (Gonsalves, 2010, para. 2). Sports journalism, in particular, seems to have utilized twitter as its new tool in a way that other forms of journalism do not.
English: Twitter headquarters at 795 Folsom Street...
English: Jack Dorsey and Barack Obama at Twitter T...
twitter fail imageTwitter has completely changed the game of news cycles and is now the most dangerous component of sports journalism.
Sports journalists who have been using traditional methods began asking the question, "If - and how- is this new medium impacting the ancient art of journalism and the way we communicate?" Innis would argue that in today's tech savvy world the way we receive our sports 'news' has affected our consciousness and therefore our social organization. Twitter has certainly emerged as a valuable source for sports journalism due to the number of athletes who maintain active accounts. But the platform has also changed as an equally valuable outlet for these journalists to provide their own content. The medium that is Twitter continues to change the face of sports journalism.
Relating to Twitter's usefulness as a source of information, the...