Image adapted from Design Mind
Remember the “story” that broke on Twitter announcing Magic Johnson was buying the Jacksonville Jaguars? Well, Darren Rovell, Sports Business Reporter at CNBC remembers it well. Not long ago, someone claiming to be affiliated with ESPN radio broke the news via Twitter. Darren immediately picked up the phone and called Jaguars owner, Wayne Weaver, asking if it was true. And of course it wasn’t. Twitter and sports reporting have become the equivalent to dating rumors of the Mean Girls variety – it’s becoming increasingly hard to tell a factual report from a rumor.
Thanks to the invention of mobile apps and social networks like Twitter, virtually anyone can be a sport’s reporter these days. Blogging and podcasting have been the gateway for anyone to portray him or herself as a legitimate source and there are success stories everywhere. But hidden behind a computer and not in front of a network television camera, you start to question whether these reports come from a reputable source or a geek simply trying to see how viral their reports can get. Think of the network of journalists and bloggers like America; there are some bad cities out there that give all of us a bad name.
