Social Media and Sports Journalism

With so many social media platforms today, we see many different jobs in sports that were not available until recently. As a former athlete I like to keep up on the major sports such as the NFL, NBA, and MLB. Most of the time I do this through Twitter, Instagram, and Facebook. The most popular sports journalists today use these platforms as great ways to quickly break stories to large amounts of people. A great example of this is Adam Schefter, who works as an NFL Insider for ESPN. If you follow the NFL closely you probably recognize his name. He is one of the people who breaks major stories about trades, injury reports, and other important information about the NFL. Currently his Twitter has 8 Million followers, which is his primary platform he uses to break urgent stories to the sports world quickly. Social media allows for him to instantly put out important information to his 8 Million followers and more in a matter of seconds. In todays world a sports journalist must utilize these great tools the way he does if they want to become top sports journalists. This makes me wonder where sports journalism is going to go in the future. Now that magazines and newspapers are becoming less popular, will social media fill that spot for journalists trying to make it in sports media? One position that was touched on in our COMM 415 Sports Information lecture was club content producer. As I mentioned the rise of social media is especially important for sports. They are responsible for producing graphic and video content for distribution across online and offline channels. (Digital Content Producer, 2019, n.p.) I think there is a useful place for more video content with 24/7 coverage of sports and the athletes. Now people want to feel more connected with the athletes, and more content beyond the field/court is something I see continuing to increase in popularity. With this said we can see a decrease in television ratings and more people are switching to social media or streaming services. This also bodes well for sports journalists if they adapt correctly. This can tie in with a question from Clarissa’s blog on journalisms future. She poses the question “I also am wondering why more news stations have not yet moved to doing lives on Instagram and Facebook, since so many people don’t have regular tv anymore?” (Journalisms Future, 2021, n.p.) I feel that when it comes to news stations the move towards social media is something that is different and takes time to adapt. With this said I do think that going live is growing in popularity on Instagram and Facebook. A lot of professional teams will go live on Instagram during pregame to try and bring more attention to the game. I think eventually we will see many news networks primarily using social media platforms to broadcast so they can connect with the younger generations. The question I would like to ask all of you is what impacts do you think covid-19 will have on sports journalism? I am meaning for the future, even after vaccines are distributed and life returns to normal. Do you feel there will be permanent changes due to the pandemic? If so, what do you think those changes may be?

Citations:

Digital Content Producer. (2017, May 17). Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://www.sportsinsights.com/company/digital-content-producer/

Weebly, C. (2021, January 19). Blog. Retrieved January 21, 2021, from https://sportsreportingclarissa.weebly.com/blog