There are times in the Twitterverse when keeping it real can go horribly, horribly wrong.

A few weeks ago, Toronto Blue Jays manager John Farrell said he wasn't going to mandate his players stay off Twitter, but also said publicly that he'd advise against using the micro-blogging platform because athletes would just be setting "themselves up for another distraction." 

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I often tell new writers - in both academia and sports - that sometimes the best way to improve is to identify a favorite writer to draw inspiration from as a "mentor writer".

Although I might be late to the party, I'm adding recently retired women's basketball pioneer Mel Greenberg to my personal list. Perhaps not for his writing as much as what he stands for.

In a Philadelphia Inquirer article yesterday morning staff writer Frank Fitzpatrick wrote about Greenberg's earliest contribution to the game.

Women's hoops guru retires | Philadelphia Inquirer | 04/24/2010

In the early 1970s, while Greenberg was working in the newsroom, tiny Immaculata rose to prominence with its first women's national title in 1972, and followed that with championships the next two seasons.

The success of coach Cathy Rush's Mighty Macs sparked interest here and elsewhere, so much so that by 1976, Inquirer sports editor Jay Searcy had asked Greenberg to put together a women's poll that would mirror the men's rankings. At the time, most newspapers ignored the sport, not even listing its scores on the agate page.

"Immaculata put women's basketball on the map," Greenberg said. In 1978-79, the Associated Press began carrying the poll, crediting Greenberg and The Inquirer.

"All of a sudden," Foster said, "papers started printing the poll. Then came the scores. Pretty soon there were people covering our games and writing about them."

The act of publishing rankings might seem mundane given our current networked society in which any random 11-year-old can find a blog space to number a few school names. However to have the vision to dedicate the kind of energy he did to this project  - and most of all putting the work into building the contacts to strengthen his work - is impressive. I think it's hard not to admire the story.

I must confess that as someone who just started covering the WNBA seriously in the final year of Greenberg's career I'm actually not that familiar with his work. However, reading about his retirement this week and looking back over his work, I must say that I find it quite inspiring. After reading a few of his articles you can sense that he's a man with a passion for the game and its growth. Even without ever meeting the man himself, it's hard not to admire someone with that much passion for what he does and the ability to channel it into a craft.

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I will never claim the real world experience to have all the answers about sports journalism.

However, as I think some other Swish Appeal writers might be able to tell you, I care quite a bit about writing and see blogging as a process of constantly improving upon my writing.

As someone with an undergraduate minor in print journalism and graduate training in ethnographic research, I also think about the distinct differences between the two forms: esoteric vs. public, research vs. reporting, inquiry vs. news. But what's most interesting about having dabbled in both is that there is definitely one major similarity: it's about documenting situations as a representation of some bigger whole.

Dave Kindred of the National Sports Journalism Center presented one articulation of what sportswriting is about that seems to resonate with the writing sensibilities I've developed from my experience in ethnography and journalism.

Archive » Oh, to be 21 and doing it all for the first time . . . » National Sports Journalism Center
"Sports is a microcosm of life – with the volume turned up," said Steven Ungerleider, co-chair of the Texas program’s advisory board and consultant to the U.S. and International Olympic committees. (Borrowing the "volume" line from the wonderful sportswriter, Mark Whicker of the Orange County Register.) "It involves virtually all of us, as athletes, coaches, spectators. It’s integral to teaching ethics, standards, and principles that touch every aspect of our lives."

Ungerleider's description of journalism does not necessarily call for increased touchy feely human interest stories that deify our athletes more than capture their achievements. Instead, I see it as a call for something much simpler: that journalists simply attend to the situation in front of them as an interaction between human beings as any other writer might.

Although I think there's a standard of journalism that should be adhered to across sports, I think good journalism is probably even more important for women's sports. Those that are truly invested in the growth of women's sports have to dedicate themselves to constant improvement if for not other reason to counter balance the piles of garbage produced by people who simply don't care. And I think good journalism that helps the game grow can be produced without becoming an outright cheerleader or public relations agent.

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If you were ever walking around the streets of San Diego in the last year and ran across a 5’9" basketball player and self-described "eccentric", tweeting away on her Blackberry, stopping to snap a quick picture to add to her website while humming along to John Mayer, you just might have crossed the path of Jene Morris.

Morris, recently drafted by the Indiana Fever, never expected this newfound life and career that befell her just a mere few weeks ago. The woman who would "rather just go with the wind and be free" is preparing for a life to which she is not accustomed.

"I really didn’t expect all of this going into college and in high school I really didn’t expect to make it to the WNBA," Morris reflects. "This has all been a whirlwind and a great overwhelming experience, nonetheless."

Morris had her sights set on graduate school and obtaining an advanced degree in advertising, allowing her to become a creative director. This background and her undergraduate field of study, Media Studies, has broadened her perspective on the world of social media, in which she is an active member. Morris talks about the expanding her reach through new media with almost amazement in her voice as she remarks about the advancements from radio and newspaper to the internet, iPhone applications, and the "whole wave of the digital age".

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After having to withstand months of chatter about whether UConn is "bad for women's basketball", their victory parade and rally at the state capitol in Hartford seemed to prompt an opportunity to reflect on the actual significance of their 78 game winning streak.

Geno Savoring This One, But Can't Help Looking Ahead - Courant.com
"Everybody has their defining moments," Auriemma said after the downtown parade in honor of Title No. 7. "And that second half maybe was what Maya Moore absolutely needed at this point in her career to set herself up for next season."

As much as the second half was a defining moment for Moore, it was probably the defining moment for the team's championship run as a whole, as Auriemma described to ESPN shortly after securing his second consecutive National Championship.

"I've never been prouder of a group of young people than I am of this group because of how they fought back today - it would've been easy for them to just pack it in," said Auriemma about UConn bouncing back from a school-low 12 first half points. "And people ask, ‘What are you going to do the first time you're in a close game? How are you going to react?' Well reacted exactly the way champions react and we won the game and that's all that counts."

Although the National Championship game was not necessarily a thing of beauty, UConn gave us exactly what people should have wanted to see in that game from any champion: rather than cruising to win number 78 with another blowout, they were forced to respond to adversity against the worthiest opponent the nation had to offer. That should have been exactly what we want to see from a champion.

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I don't actually care about John Mayer one way or the other -- anybody trying this hard to get attention should simply be ignored because any publicity is good publicity, right?

Of course, I found his controversial comments abhorrent, but sadly not a whole lot different than how you might hear a 20 year old college student describe their weekend exploits in between games on the basketball court (not coincidentally, these tend to be the same individuals who find nothing wrong with Lindsey Vonn covers because, "She's smokin' hot, bro"). The longer we just dismiss such nonsense as "boys will be boys", the longer such nonsense will continue. So although we should stop pretending to be shocked, we also need to acknowledge that there is a problem worthy of our concern bigger than one man who happened to have his words published in Playboy. We should start finding this disturbing.

However, this matter of desperately drawing attention to oneself -- whether it be in a published interview or casually with one's friends -- is another problem that I find particularly worthy of our attention, especially in the social media context.

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When Swish Appeal first launched way back in September 2009, we made the decision to cover women's college basketball and figured that we would try to obtain media credentials for games.

Given that we had both been credentialed to cover the WNBA playoffs for Swish Appeal and to cover the WNBA separately prior to the launch of Swish Appeal, we figured - perhaps naively - that getting access to college games would be a smooth process. We had we established some credibility at the highest levels of women's basketball and we figured so many schools go without consistent women's basketball coverage that they might see social media as an opportunity.

So I sent out about 20 emails inquiring about the process of obtaining a credential for both writers and all of the great photography you see on the site. Some didn't respond. Some responded immediately and simply said they would grant us access. Others granted us access after a follow-up discussion. But some said they had a policy of only granting media access to writers for "major news media outlets" and would not provide us with a credential.

We are obviously grateful for the schools that have provided us with access because we think it adds to the quality of content on our site. At the same time, I totally understand the rationale behind not providing us with access.

First, we were relatively new - there was no track record to determine what type of work we would produce about the college game. Second, blog quality varies so greatly that the skepticism about a new blog is justified - they may not want to let someone just to snoop around and make irreverent, sarcastic rants about their student athletes. Third, there were concerns about "professionalism", but let's be honest - there are writers for many established "major news media outlets" that hardly reflect anything remotely close to "professionalism" or "journalistic integrity" (see coverage of Woods, Tiger or Arenas, Gilbert).

With the number of fans writing sports blogs, the growth of major fan-centric sites like SBNation.com, and of course, Twitter, it's clear that fans see the value of new media in fueling their love of sports. However, sports teams and leagues have been a little slower to embrace it, as a recent New York Times article about the NBA's attempt to restrict distribution of a Gilbert Arenas photo demonstrates.

N.B.A.’s Effort to Censor Arenas Photo Raises Questions - NYTimes.com
Sports leagues are likely to become more prescriptive about what images can and cannot be used from its games, according to Cindy Cohn, the legal director at the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a nonprofit group focused on digital rights. To fans, that may take the form of more restrictions listed on the backs of their tickets. This is likely to lead to more tension between the league, its fans and the news media.

"There’s a fundamental disconnect between fans who consider teams part of their culture, history and town, and the owners of the teams that view them as their private property," Cohn said. "One saving grace is that they do care about their image and they don’t want to look like jack-booted thugs. But free speech is important."

However, last week the NCAA posted a release actually suggesting that member institutions embrace social media as a means to build support for programs.

Panel assesses changing times in media - NCAA.org
A panel of experts at an education session Friday indicated that programs willing to invest in effective communication can reap far greater support than at any time in their history. At the same time, the experts said those rewards may go unrealized if administrators don’t make the effort to develop creative, interesting content, even if some of it involves risk.

This seems especially relevant for women's basketball, a collegiate sport struggling for attendance and overall fan support. However, while the release outlined the affordances of social media, it did not necessarily address the nature of the perceived risk.

From our experience, it's not that sports information directors "don't get" the value of social media, it's that they are justifiably concerned about the quality of reporting on sites like Swish Appeal with much looser editorial accountability structures. Although that thinking is understandable, it rests upon a fundamentally flawed set of assumptions that confuse the medium, content, and good reporting.

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This was supposed to be a University of Washington vs University of Southern California preview. But I stumbled across this issue while looking at the Michael Cooper scandal and felt compelled to write about it. For previews, check out the Seattle Times or Everett Herald.

The great promise of the web (after we got over that absurd Y2K scare) was that suddenly people from diverse backgrounds would have a place to share perspectives and engage in dialogue that would otherwise be impossible in daily life given that people often associate with like-minded individuals.

Many people would probably agree with danah boyd and say that grandiose ideal never came to fruition and social media may in fact merely have the opposite effect: creating echo chambers that reinforce the cliques, clubbiness, and narrow-mindedness that people hoped the web could destroy.

Can Social Network Sites Enable Political Action? | Rebooting the System
Most people are simply logging in to hang out with the friends that they already know. The warnings about stranger danger have worked; most people are not looking to meet new people, but to gather with friends when physical co-presence is impossible or impractical. For active participants on SNSes, particularly young people, networked publics substitute for physical publics that have become inaccessible, untenable, heavily regulated, or downright oppressive. If you can’t grab a beer at a pub with friends or hang out in a public setting without being banned or shooed away for loitering, where else can you gather with friends? Online, of course.

Clearly, those are not the kind of social interactions the world needs more of. They don't promote the exchanges of perspective that many of us would argue facilitate a functional democracy. Worst of all, we can all imagine scenarios in which online echo chambers tangibly harm people offline.

However, in terms of how "news" is produced and consumed, are echo chambers really that bad? Consider this point from David Weinberger:

Echo Chambers = Democracy | Rebooting the System

Our picture of the Net as a set of hateful echo chambers is encouraged, too, by the premise that the only sites that matter are those with hundreds of thousands of readers. That’s how the mainstream media works. But the Web is characterized by a "long tail" of sites with relatively few readers. The echo chamber dynamic is facilitated by sites so large that the commenters are functionally unknown to one another, and the way to get attention is to be more outrageous than the previous person. That dynamic is missing on the smaller sites that, in aggregate, constitute the bulk of web traffic.
...
So, what good does conversation really do in a democracy? It helps us work out differences based upon shared ground. Conversations shape our existing ideas and occasionally generate new ideas that are in line with our existing beliefs. We can probably count the times on one hand that conversation changes our minds about anything important.

The idea(l) here is that in fact echo chambers enhance our thinking because of the opportunity to challenge one another’s ideas while starting from similar premises thus ultimately arriving at better ideas – and ideally eradicating the worst ideas – within our existing belief system. So the value of echo chambers is up for debate and more likely depends on the type of participation.

However, for sports, we may be seeing something slightly different. The convergence of social media and sports media might actually be a closer approximation of the grandiose ideals of knowledge sharing on the web than in politics or mainstream news. What we may be witnessing in sports media is that actualization of "networked publics" in which people from diverse "places" around the web come together and sometimes share divergent beliefs for the sake of mutually enhancing their knowledge of the games they love.  The result is not only unprecedented access to sports information, but also unique insights about events that enhance how we experience the games we love and, in some cases -- like the recent Michael Cooper incident – a little bit of context that adds some depth to the soundbytes that make headlines.

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