Twitter Changing The Way Sports News Is Disseminated

Twitter is a “media/marketing vehicle disguised as a social network,” and it is “changing the way that information is dispersed, for good and bad,” according to Bill Simmons of ESPN.com. NBA players this offseason have used Twitter to “break news about themselves,” and reporters are “posting scoops on Twitter even before their employers had a chance to print them.” Simmons wrote when T’Wolves F Kevin Love in June posted on Twitter that coach Kevin McHale was not returning before the team made an official announcement, it was a “watershed moment for sports journalism.” Simmons: “We skipped the middleman and went right from the team to the fans for a breaking story” (ESPN.com, 7/28). USA TODAY’s Thomas Emerick writes athletes now “possess even more power to circumvent the modern sportswriter.” But while it is “all dandy for athletes and fans, it’s leaving journalists further out of the brawl,” and sometimes the “immediacy of Twitter hurts accuracy.” ESPN.com’s Tim Keown: “Speculation is not a crime. But from a journalistic sense, it seems like Twitter -- and whatever technology comes next -- is becoming a place that you can be wrong without consequences” (USA TODAY, 7/30).

Bill Duffy Helps Launch New Social-Networking Web Site

SOCIAL CIRCLE: The WALL STREET JOURNAL’s Hannah Karp reported Pro Player Connect, a social-networking site for pro athletes that verifies players’ identities, is “now letting fans join.” The site also is “helping its 900 athlete-users link their pages to their true Facebook and Twitter accounts to foil imposters who pose as athletes on the Internet” (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 7/29). Meanwhile, social-networking sports Web site makeitpro.com launched Monday. The site, which was partly founded by agent Bill Duffy, features Suns G Steve Nash, Vikings WR Bernard Berrian and snowboarder Gretchen Bleiler, among other athletes (TWINCITIES.com, 7/27).

BEHIND-THE-SCENES ACCESS: In Chicago, Fred Mitchell notes Bears DE Alex Brown has launched a new Web site, alexbrown96.com, and he will blog regularly on the site beginning with the start of training camp this weekend. Brown said that fans will be able to get a “behind-the-scenes perspective from an established player, reading and viewing what it is like in an NFL training camp.” Brown also will be “posting pictures and video” from camp. But Brown said, “I will stay within the guidelines of what coach (Lovie) Smith sets for us” (CHICAGO TRIBUNE, 7/30).