Larry Ryan
What were you doing between half three and half five yesterday afternoon?
If you enjoy any kind of constructive or meaningful life, chances are you missed an intriguing sports journalism experiment; one that had newsrooms all over the world scrambling, sent Twitter into a frenzy and, ultimately, rather backfired on Guardian Newspapers.
It all kicked off when Guardian sports editor Ian Prior posted this Tweet around 3.30.
@ianprior: Major - and boy do I mean it - football exclusive coming up on guardian.co.uk sometime around 5.30.
As they probably still say in biology class, and maybe civics as well, it was the most natural thing in the world. Journo gets decent scoop, seeks to maximise the audience for it before somebody else gets wind of it. A virtual “Read all about it”. What it says about the future operations of newspapers that Guardian opted to go online with its exclusive rather than save it for this morning’s paper, we’ll leave for another day.
Anyway, so far, so not very exciting. But Prior, on the face of it at least, seems to have made two misjudgements.
Firstly, in a week that sent the two most high-profile figures in UK sports media packing, Prior probably placed the bar a little low on what might be considered a “major” football exclusive. Only “Rooney Joins Arsenal. Throws off Underpants” could possibly have lived up to the billing.
More importantly, Prior underestimated the power of Twitter and social media in general, a mistake the Egyptian government weren’t going to make today.
Prior’s own following on Twitter is around 7000 strong, not insignificant, but modest enough compared to the heavy hitters. Yet the story swept through the network in seconds, was retweeted thousands of times and the hashtag #guardianexclusive quickly became a worldwide trending topic.
Sports desks everywhere held a space for the upcoming story, the Irish Examiner among them. A BBC man tweeted admitting BBC Sport was “on the edge of our seats all afternoon”. Bloggers everywhere were busy piggybacking on the drama by making wild predictions. Man United to be sold was a popular one. Tevez gone to Chelsea. Lineker to Sky. As teasers go, it was incredibly successful pre-publicity.
But then, slightly after 5.30, the story came; and what a letdown it was.
“Inter Milan set to bid £40m for Gareth Bale in the summer.”
Had Bale been photographed lounging in Massimo Moratti’s jacuzzi having called in sick to ‘Arry, there might have been some merit in the story. But there were no quotes, no specifics and boy was the Twitter community unimpressed.
The backlash started politely enough:
That was disappointing
So...a club may bid for Bale...in the summer. That was a big pile of meh
Twaxi for @ianprior!
But it didn’t take long for the lunatics to enter the fray and the first suggestion that Prior would be better off dead arrived within fifteen minutes. Blushing sailors logged off everywhere as the Twitter timeline salted over with fruity language.
Some urged that Prior be sacked, others moved to organise a boycott. He began to lose followers in droves.
To his credit, the good-humoured, if chastened, Prior rather turned things round with his sanguine reaction to the fuss.
Going to ring up Gray and Keys for a pint later. Then maybe drown a few kittens
Some of the attack dogs were called to heel. Many of the aggressors rather sheepishly admitted their overreaction.
Ok after over 2 hours i have calmed down and am #nowfollowing @ianprior. The news was exciting to him maybe bales his fav player
And of course on one level Prior’s story and teaser worked a treat for Guardian Online. The story was probably among the most clicked anywhere on the Web yesterday. It attracted more than a hundred comments within five minutes, albeit mainly disparaging ones.
But Guardian has ambitions beyond simply attracting cheap hits through speculative stories. Prior’s Tweet attracted such attention in the first place because there is a certain level of trust in the quality of Guardian’s output.
The irreverent and level-headed approach of Barry Glendenning, Paul Doyle, Sid Lowe, Sean Ingle and Prior himself has earned the site a reputation for deflating hype and sensible comment.
Last year Guardian launched Open Platform, making all its online content available for free to bloggers, websites and anybody who wants to reuse it. Obviously, there are rules; Guardian branding and advertising must stay with the articles, but it was an extraordinarily brave move in an era when other media organisations are moving to re-establish pay-walls.
The idea is that Guardian and its content will become part of the fabric of the Web and as its content trickles into all corners, so too does Guardian’s advertising network.
One dud story won’t harm those ambitions. Despite the warning from @maldini that “The internet has a long memory mate”, it doesn’t really.
Tweeters were soon ready to be excited again when @mirrorfootball boasted late last night they would have a big story online at midnight and on their back pages this morning. When the story arrived, Chelsea’s interest in Fernando Torres was greeted with much less scorn.
Perhaps Prior’s tactic will now become the norm with all stories trailed in advance on social media. But it won’t work if the stories used are as tame as this one. And it will never work unless journalists and marketers better gauge their audience.
Source: http://feeds.examiner.ie/~r/iesportsblog/~3/Co4n77yJJn0/post.aspx
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