Praise for the International Gymnastics Federation.
At the World Gymnastics Championships 2010, for the first time, the training gyms were opened to media. It was great.
I heard of no incidents of over zealous reporters hounding gymnasts or coaches. Everyone was cool.
And it was fascinating to see different approaches of different nations. (Brazilians spend more time on Facebook than any other country, for example.)
A Look Inside the Training Hall with China, Australia, Japan, and Romania
Click PLAY or watch it on Gymnastike.
Formal press conferences were almost non-existant. All media preferred the new “mixed zones” where they could ask questions one-on-one at the end of each session. That’s one reason why there are so many personal interviews posted online this time.
I did hear complaints (second hand) that some of the good old media hands were less happy to be sharing the wealth with new media. (And with one chicken.)
Personally I avoided the scrums so did not see any media fist fights myself.
But, as you know, old media is dying. Money for events like this drying up. Canadian TV did not attend this time, for example. Budget cuts.
FIG and USAG have embraced the future, posting immediately to YouTube this Worlds, updating 24/7. Encouraging bloggers.
This was by far the best coverage of a World Championships ever online. … Old media has big problems trying to compete online.
New media is the future, good or bad. If you’re reading this blog, there’s a strong chance you’ve already canceled your newspaper subscriptions.
Security was good in Rotterdam, but not too strict, … aside from the time Gymnastike got kicked off the bus.
But Tokyo will be a madhouse for media. I hope stricter rules are put in place for the mixed media zones. They could have bloggers speak to athletes last, if that will keep the AP happy.
Note that Gymnastike and Gymnastics Examiners are not blogs. They are both even newer kinds of media than blogs.
21 comments ↓
“there’s a strong chance you’ve already canceled your newspaper subscriptions. ”
I haven’t. Still get two papers. I hate reading everything online. Not to mention, one of the papers I get charges me to read their articles online when it’s cheaper to get a subscription. Plus there are many things in the papers I get that AREN’T posted online.
The NY Times is still worth getting in hard copy.
But my local paper really started to suck, so that’s gone.
I like the physical act of holding books and paper. But I’m old.
Out of curiosity, what do you consider Gymnastics Examiner if not a blog?
The Examiner is no different than WordPress or Tumblr. It’s just a way of publishing blogs and an easier way for some people to make some very small amount of money on them (and make Philip Anschutz rich). It is not at all taken seriously in the media, even among bloggers themselves. I know of several PR people who, when contacting media and bloggers, will not bother with anyone from the Examiner.
I’m curious how many people actually read these gymnastics blogs. My friends who do PR for tech companies won’t bother with a blog if it doesn’t have at least 10,000 readers a day. Obviously the number would have to come down for gymnastics but I’d say anything less than 1,000 doesn’t qualify one as a legitimate media outlet.
Even if the readership is somewhat limited, blogs have an impact in terms of general discussions among aficionados. No, you won’t pound out pageviews of Cocacola ads. But they definitely have an impact on expert communities, early adopters, etc. And often analysis and the like done in blogs has an effect on mainstream journalism.
“The Examiner” is no different than a blog. It’s the Geocities of today. Anyone can set up and publish.
Valid points except I haven’t seen evidence that this blog, aunt joyce, or couch gymnast is actually influencing discussion on boards.
1. Well…I am banned from all the boards…so don’t rub salt. Boards rule. I just am blocked from them. For GGMB and WWGym, I can’t even read.
1.5. But in any case, the boards are just the extreme part of the spectrum for nontraditional media. My point was that nontraditional can impact traditional (not the converse). Do you get me? I can draw it out on a numberline spectrum for you.
2. It was a general comment on the general concept. Even if this set of blogs is not doing what I say, it’s a pretty well known and at least discussed concept. You even have PR firms that talk about “going viral”, have the District 9 media approach, etc. So my response was towards rebutting that view of only pagecounts matter. I mean, even in the traditional media day, it was very well known that TV and Radio reached way more audience then newspapers, yet were almost embarressingly dependant on the early morning editions of the WSJ, Post and Times for content.
3. There was a fluff peice by network (I think) TV on how Aunt Joyce impacts figure skating. So when you say “no evidence”, I think you are off. And Rick noted the case of Shewfelt being impacted by commentary on blogs. Would you bet me that if I polled Rothlisberger, Dagget, etc. that none of them read the blogs or Gymnastike? They’d be morons not to!
4. And you can see mainstream reporters that read political blogs. It’s pretty normal to see that permeation effect. Heck Journolist tried to organize and orchestrate it in a sort of secret cabal to push message!
And (as pointed out in the other thread), the style of reporting on Examiner is more journalistic, less bloglike. I agree that they are not “real newspapers”. That said, for whatever reason, the people writing that stuff, tend to like to write in a journalistic fashion and produce content of that sort (more so than bloglike analysis or controversy starters). Heck, personally I would prefer the old Gymblog more. But if the person producing it enjoys writing like a journalist and has journalism experience (and Blythe does and this is pretty common for other Examiners), the so be it. And I bet she could at least use the content for “clippings” if she were applying for a “real job” in the dying industry of mainstream reporting (just like you can use your student paper reports as clippings).
Well-known PR firms have standards about the blogs they target. They will not advertise to just anyone with a blogger or wordpress account. They look at a number of things, especially the number of readers.
And considering John Roethlisberger didn’t know who Philip Boy was before this competition, I doubt he’s reading these blogs.
I think we need to stop being obsessed with what is media and what isn’t. In truth, the internet has changed the shape of media and exchange of information. The definition of media changes every day.
Why do we have media at competitions?
It is to benefit the sport of gymnastics and allow gymnasts to keep in touch with the news when they cannot be at gymnastics competitions.
So if any website does this without harming the competition, I say they should be accredited. I think there should be rules in place to make sure people don’t overstep boundaries, but getting hung up on what is and is not media doesn’t help anyone.
FACT: Media and non-media outlets can do harmful things in competitions. ‘Professionalism’ is important and theoretically, this is something ‘old media’ has. But some media outlets are guilty of sensationalising and misreporting facts (yuchenko off the beam, anyone), and there are some bad interviewers out there (a certain interviewer after a certain final in Beijing).
Sorry I meant:
It is to benefit the sport of gymnastics and allow gymnastics fans to keep in touch with the news when they cannot be at gymnastics competitions.
Denial is not a river in Egypt. The world is changing, and there is no going back.
I sense some resentment here that people who didn’t go go journalism school or otherwise pay their dues are getting press passes right along with those who did.
I do agree that whoever gets a media credential should behave in a professional manner and those who don’t deserve to be called out.
Blogs definitely influence discussion on boards, not the least because they are one of the main sources of day to day information on gymnastics and they get the information out there more quickly than the MSM.
I’ve linked to or referenced plenty of Coach Rick’s stuff on boards. Gym Examiner’s /IG Facebook/The All Around quick hits were all over the internet.
Knock Gym Examiner if you want, but an offhand remark on it helped me figure out Jon Horton should be competing a Dragulescu soon. Wouldn’t see that in my local paper – if I still got it. I doubt the NY Times was on that one, either.
Darwin got it right. It’s going to be survival of the fittest, and like it or not, for niche sports like gymnastics (especially men’s and men’s NCAA) “New Media” is the fittest.
The world is changing, and it’s going to be adapt or die.
The good news about that is that as more people migrate to participating in blogging and creating on line news sites the lower quality ones will either be pushed out or be forced to improve.
Anne ain’t Katy Couric, but Couric isn’t covering any men’s NCAA meets.
AND if “StickItMedia” hadn’t had the balls to break the story that the California Men were in trouble, I doubt there would have been nearly the effort to save it that there was. ALL of the visible efforts in behalf of that program postdate the story that was posted there.
When it comes to the men’s NCAA, the new media aren’t everything, they are the only thing.
True, it didn’t work (although that Opera isn’t over yet), but I have a feeling without “Stick It” we would have just woken up one day to discover the program was dead.
Seriously, if Rothlisberger didn’t know who Philip Boy was before Rotterdam, he SHOULD have been reading blogs and message boards.
Universal Sports.com basically ripped one of The Couch Gymnast’s training reports. They did name her blog as a credit, but I don’t think she knew about it, and I’m pretty sure they didn’t pay her for it. To me, that was a pretty unprofessional move from one of the mainstream outlets.
Blogs do have a huge effect on message boards. They tide fans over with a flow of information while traditional media ignores us until the next big competition.
Even though blogs may be amateurish by some standards, they are written by people who at least know something about the sport. Mainstream media is annoying because the coverage borders on being inane. How many times do I have to hear, “The beam is only four inches wide”? Maybe if these outlets had something real to say, the fans would care about them more.
Back when all I could get was the USAG mag, and IG it was the voice from above that spoke down to me. Because of the internet, blogs, disscusion boards, etc I now know there is much more to the story, and it has made me a bigger fan. I have no reason to go back to “real” journalists that want to feed people what to think.
You all act like gym blogs are the only real source of information. What’s funny that is a lot of the info the gymnastics blogs comment on is really from mainstream media. That interview with the Russian team? That’s from Sovietskiy Sport, a Russian paper that’s been around for 80 some odd years. Their journalists may have blogs and they may include flash video on their sites, but they’re still mainstream media in Russia. With the exception of Stick It Media, which I believe is run by former gymnasts, and Aunt Joyce (whose info is frequently wrong), I can’t recall a single blog where I actually got any real “news”
I’d concede that mainstream coverage of gymnastics is probably a lot better in Russia, China, or Japan than it is in the US, especially for MAG.
The US Men’s NCAA on the other hand…Gymnastike, Stick It, Gym Examiner, and team websites do most of it. There may be occasional articles on specific teams in local papers.
Jon Horton’s new vault – hinted at on Examiner, confirmed by him on Gymnastike.
People get their news from what they look at, and I mostly get mine from blogs and boards.
Who’s cute and tiny or who has the ugliest leotard is very important to a lot of people. God only really knows why, but it is.
I turned into a diehard Men’s NCAA fan because of Coach Rick – he posted the site of the championships would be right next to my work – so I went. One meet and I was addicted for life. I sure didn’t read about it in my local paper.
Sure, he got the information from some press release, but the bottom line is I found it here.
People need to use their brains and not take everything they read on blogs or message boards as the gospel truth, but the same could be said of content from mainstream media.
I rediscovered my love of gymnastics through this website and the Couch Gymnast blog. That is another thing: blogs put passion across, and they have much more depth than the few lines a year that my newspaper would give me.
As someone who has read things in the NZ daily papers which I know to be untrue, I question everything I read. I still get a newspaper in the weekend. Lazing on the floor with a coffee and the sun on my back is a treat. They are also good for cleaning up after cats. But for gymnastics info, I turn to the internet. No contest.
[...] Rick McCharles and Full Twist posted great perspectives on the current state of gymnastics blogging and new media. As they both duly noted, the most prolific new media representatives who reported from World Championships in Rotterdam were Anne Phillips from Gymnastike, Blythe Lawrence from Gymnastics Examiner and Brigid McCarthy from the Couch Gymnast. As Coach Rick said, FIG and USAG have wisely embraced new media, and are “encouraging bloggers.” As well they should. Compared to the stodgy “old media” sources, which includes newspapers and wire services (AP), the new media mavens are a breath of fresh air and downright have more interesting things to say. [...]
Blythe of Gymnastics Examiner is a journalist. Aunt Joyce has some kind of media training. FYI.
Gymnastics Coaching gets about 7000 uniques a day, most people looking at 2 pages. … Over Worlds that would have been far, far higher. It has been creeping up steadily for years.
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