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UW Imposes 20-Tweet Limit On Live Events
theodp writes "GeekWire's Taylor Soper reports that the University of Washington has capped live sports coverage at 20 Tweets per basketball game (45 for football) and threatens to revoke the credentials of journalists who dare exceed the Twitter limits. Tacoma News Tribune reporter Todd Dybas was reportedly 'reprimanded' after drawing the ire of the UW Athletic Dept. for apparently Tweeting too much during UW's 85-63 Sunday win over Loyola."
In basketball, usually more points get made than goals get made in football so shouldn't the tweet limit be higher for basketball?
That's between them and their employer, not the organizer of the event they're covering, isn't it?
Can you imagine being asked to cover an event, but only allowed to write 6300 characters about it?
So um... what's to prevent random attendees (or previous credential-holders who have gotten their credentials revoked) from live tweeting the whole game?
"..sounds to me like it's a pro sports team first and everything else second."
To me it sounds like the ole 'protect our soon-to-be extinct business model at any costs' no matter how idiotic it is.
I think the issue here is that a print reporter essentially becomes a broadcast journalist when tweeting the game play by play. The make royalty from the authorized broadcasts of the game and want people watching/listening to those instead of following tweets in near real time to which they get no income from.
The news sources won't skip the games because the readers/viewers/customers will look for the information if they do not carry it. Its essentially sending customers to the competition where they might like something and stay.
Actually, it is a state school which is restricting them. I am curious as to whether this would stand up to a first amendment challenge. Since this involves "credentialed" journalists, who presumably receive free access to the games rather than having to purchase tickets, it certainly might withstand such a challenge.
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Can you imagine a reporter having their word limit set by the organisation they're covering rather than their own publication? And being asked to write the article as the event occurs, in real time?
What First Amendment challenge? Since when does the First Amendment oblige the school to give the reporter credentials? Methinks you have no clue what the fuck you're talking about. You do realize that getting credentials is a privilege and not a right, correct?
Can you imagine writing an article as a series of tweets?
Sounds very unprofessional.
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That's only because reporters are a reliable way to get the information. Once reporters are capped, that all changes and people will have to find their information from somewhere else. All it would take is a few students to set up a "UW sports tweets" account. There will be a demand for unofficial reporting when official reporting is censored.
Can you imagine writing an article as a series of tweets?
Sounds very unprofessional.
A few months back (August 2012), Cassian Elwes (an independent film producer) posted a series of tweets about his interaction with a distraught veteran on a flight from New York to Los Angeles. (Sorry for the Buzzfeed link, it came from MetaFilter, I swear!)
While it's not Pulitzer-level journalism, the story does emerge reasonably well from Elwes's tweets.
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Actually, @Todd_Dybas has a follower count of 436. This isn't a lot. I have over 1,000 followers and regularly talk to people on Twitter whose follower count vastly exceeds my own. Were Todd Dybas and I to attend a game and both live tweet it, would he be kicked out since he's a journalist but I'd be allowed because I'm just a spectator? Or would I be kicked out too for daring to tweet more than 20 times during the game?
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