I enjoyed this article from the October 02, 2011 Plain Dealer. I thought it was a good illustration of how social media works today.
"When star running back Peyton Hillis showed up for work last Sunday morning with a bad case of strep throat and was told to go home, the Cleveland Browns did not announce the news to the world. In fact, they didn't announce it at all.
So how did the world find out about it before Hillis even cleared the premises? Here's how:
Plain Dealer videographer David I. Andersen arrived at Cleveland Browns Stadium at around 10:30 a.m. On his way up the tunnel, he saw Hillis walking toward him in street clothes, listing to one side and looking mighty peaked. Andersen watched Hillis get into his car and drive off, then called Browns reporter Mary Kay Cabot on her cellphone. From her car in the stadium parking lot, she sent out a Tweet -- a 140-character message blast -- that quickly arrived in the computers and cellphones of her 19,000 Twitter followers. And Browns fans around the world were immediately clued in that Hillis would probably be MIA that day.
The whole thing took all of about two minutes.
In another part of town, as they say, Plain Dealer Managing Editor Thom Fladung had a ringside seat to, as he called it, "the power of social media and how news travels in the digital age."
Fladung was in the Galleria, enjoying some pregame festivities, when suddenly cellphones started going off all over the place and a murmur rippled through the crowd.
People stopped what they were doing and spread the news, then made calls of their own . . . some to their fantasy football websites to get Hillis out of their lineups, some to their bookies to get down a bet. I checked in with a friend who has been known to take a bet or two, and he said the line swung four points Sunday morning after the news was out -- the Browns went from two-point favorites to two-point underdogs.
News like that doesn't remain exclusively ours for long, as other media quickly snag it and send out reports of their own. In the old newspaper days, a scoop could last a day, or at least until TV and radio reporters could read it on the air. Now, scoops might last only minutes, but that doesn't reduce the satisfaction of being first.
Andersen had that in mind when he decided to call Cabot rather than just tweeting it himself.
"I've got about 70 followers, and Mary Kay and Tony [Grossi, our other Browns beat reporter] have thousands," he said.
He laughed at his sudden burst of popularity. "Later, Mary Kay tweeted a follow and credited '@clevideos' which is my professional Twitter name," he said. "In the span of about two minutes, I got 15 new followers."
Twitter is a relatively new resource -- our sportswriters have been using it for only the last couple of years -- but it is threatening to take over their lives. Sports fans can be ravenous for news about their teams, and every beat reporter is trying to be first, if only by minutes, with what has become a constant flow of information.
"You think about it when you're driving, when you're in the grocery store, even when you're sleeping," said Cabot. "It has completely changed the game for sportswriting. It's really accelerated what we do. Everything is lightning-quick and nonstop."
Cabot and Grossi split the responsibilities on the Browns beat. On game days, in addition to their regular coverage responsibilities, they also divide the real-time stuff: Grossi concentrates on blogging, while Cabot does most of the tweeting. On a typical NFL Sunday, she sends out 30 or more Tweets.
Both attend to their Twitter audiences during the week (Cabot is @marykaycabot; Grossi is @tonygrossi), which brings with it a certain level of fame that even their regular television appearances don't produce:
"When the Browns played in Chicago during the preseason, I had just sent out a Tweet and was walking down the street," said Cabot. "This guy was walking toward me looking at his cellphone. He looked up and saw me, held up his phone and said, 'Hey! Is this you?!' He was reading the Tweet I'd just sent."
Cabot says she has to fight the urge to Tweet news immediately as she's driving. "When [former Browns quarterback] Jake Delhomme came to Cleveland in 2010 for a visit before he signed, I got the tip while I was driving my son to baseball practice," she said with a laugh. "I handed him the phone and shouted, 'Tweet this out right now!' He was startled, but he did it."
So really, it was then-13-year-old Chris Murman -- not Cabot -- who broke that story.
You read it here first.
Diadiun is The Plain Dealer's reader representative."
