Last night via a twitter update from BloggersBlog, I read that the NCAA has a rule that bans press box attendees from blogging live about baseball games in progress. According to an AP story, under the NCAA's view, blogs are "considered a "live representation of the game" and blogs containing action photos or game reports are prohibited until the game is over." In fact, this came to light because the NCAA tossed Brian Bennett of the Courier-Journal from a baseball press box on Sunday for publishing live updates.
Huh?
The NCAA is trying to control the behavior of what we used to consider the sole media producers/publishers, while ignoring the fact that anyone watching in the stands or at home can publish their own media stream in any number of forms including SMS, photos, email, voice, full blog entries, video, etc. and expect that doing so is part of the experience of the game. The NCAA's approach seems stuck on the old way of looking at media where only the full-time, deputized and "professional" news creators reported the facts and opinions and by working with them you could effectively set the operating rules. Today, I don't think you'd really want to ban fans from commenting live even if you could. At our last SMC Atlanta meeting we scratched the surface on some of this, and I hope that in our return to the topic on June 27th, we'll go deeper.
What a weird way of looking at coverage of live sporting events. This policy seems counter-intuitive and unenforcible when applied outside the press box; do they think they should stop all attendees from publishing any form of live reports, and if they do think so, how do they think they can? Attending a live public event in the flesh gives you a unique perspective that you in some sense own the right to propagate. Once a batter hits a home run, isn't that just a garden-variety fact? Fans upload photos to Flickr and Radar.net via their cameraphones. They text to each other about the batter's open stance or the likelihood that the reliever will choke. They tweet on the public timeline about what's going on in the game and how they are feeling about it. It's impossible to control. And what about word of mouth -- can I call my friend and tell him? Is he then allowed to report on it?
It's really puzzling, and more importantly, hard to see how this somehow helps the NCAA. It's not like anyone is confusing a live blog or commentary with being there or watching on NCAA-sanctioned TV or radio. And each photo, video, text, and piece of commentary is both a piece of information and a piece of free, grassroots marketing for the product on the field. The only thing I can think of is that this is an attempt to lay some specific groundwork to prevent video rebroadcasting via phones and small cameras. Deadspin has a great write-up of some of the other implications of this policy. They give it a week before the NCAA rethinks it.
Because press boxes are small and fairly easy to monitor, this disadvantages "credentialed press" sports reporters over everyone else in attendance. If there was any advantage to being in a press box other than possibly access to an internet connection, bad-to-decent sandwiches, and peace and quiet, that's nullified by knowing you'll be under a microscope for traces of live blogging. Maybe more reporters will opt to sit in the stands. Along those lines, I also wonder if the NCAA is watching live blogs out there to look for violators, or just monitoring the behavior of the people in the press booth. How much effort is going in to trying to enforce this?
