Blogging Athletes
The Los Angeles Times has an interesting article up this week about athletes using the internet for direct communication with their fans:
As the MySpace generation reaches professional sports, many athletes are maintaining website profiles and blogs. Along with providing a direct link to fans, these personalized Internet entries serve as an excuse to limit interviews with mainstream media while also offering the ability to deliver unfiltered messages.Bryant used his site to acknowledge it would be tough to leave the Lakers — but he would if it meant playing on a winning team. Other reports are purely personal. Tiger Woods announced the birth of his daughter. And Greg Oden discussed the pain of having his tonsils taken out.
“They come off good if the athletes know what they are doing,” said Will Leitch, editor of deadspin.com, a website that often links to players’ websites. “The mistake is when you see people that still have their college MySpace profile up and all of a sudden they are in the NFL or MLB.”
Indeed, while posting messages is often intended to clear controversy, it occasionally causes it.
This is a topic I’ve covered before, in terms of musicians in these posts (among others):
How the internet transformed what it means to be a music fan
The new social rules of internet fame
Pop Stars must blog says Baltimore Sun
Music Fans and musicians belong to each other
My take on this is that it can work very well if the image the star builds on his or her site is consistent with the public persona that’s working for them already, and otherwise it can be a mess. Or as I was quoted as saying in this article:
“There’s a fine line between being candid and getting yourself in trouble, and it depends a lot on what your image is,” said Nancy Baym, an associate professor of communication studies at the University of Kansas. “There is a reason professionals usually handle that stuff.”
I strongly believe that the opportunity for direct relationship building between fans and artists, athletes, public figures, is a good thing, but I like how this article points out its potential pitfalls.
Jason Mittell wrote:
Interesting article (and nice quote), although I’m a bit surprised it doesn’t talk about Curt Schilling’s blog. It has fueled hostilities between the player and local newspaper reporters, including a few columnists writing scathing columns that mostly demonstrate how out-of-place they are in a digital media world.
Speaking of digital foreigners, this article quotes “Arenas’ marketing representative, Paisley Benaza… who she says only recently learned what a blog was.” Do you think that might be a sign that it’s time to get a new marketing representative?
Posted on 08-Aug-07 at 8:34 am | Permalink
Nancy Baym wrote:
“Do you think that might be a sign that it’s time to get a new marketing representative?”
You think? I’d say any marketer who isn’t running blog alerts on all clients ought to be replaced pronto. Or maybe there’s a great consulting market for people like us to explain to these old school marketers how to keep up in this new digital world.
I hadn’t heard about Schilling’s blog. Interesting!
Posted on 08-Aug-07 at 11:03 am | Permalink
Jason Mittell wrote:
For a sense of the mockery that some of the Boston press gives to Schilling’s blog, check out this article.
Posted on 08-Aug-07 at 2:40 pm | Permalink