Dan Wetzel on column writing

The take-away: when covering games, don't send out (a) myriad (of) tweets.

 

If you are not watching the game on TV, isn't there a better way to follow the action, like a game cast, than looking at tweets?

Now if you are tweeting "trainer said, Gore broke his leg," that is one thing, but "TD 49ERS, Montana to Rice" is just redundant because of all the locations you can see it.

 

I agree with his main point but Twitter is incredibly useful when you miss something and/or when journalists and fans watching home saw/ heard something you didn't. Also, I use Twitter to try out lines and jokes. I use them all the time. My problem is with journalists who break stuff on Twitter before writing it _ Twitter doesn't pay you like Wetzel said _ and the guys who use Twitter as ego strokes, be it RTing compliments or spoiling a live event like a draft.

 

Are you a comedian?

 

You got jokes, huh?

 

I agree with Wetzel's sentiments, but he misses one key point.

Most reporters tweet because they're told by their bosses that they have to.

Wetzel probably is not, and gets free reign to handle his work, and the emphasis of it, how ever he wants.

 

Wetzel's point is simply that there is tweeting and there is TWEETING. Any boss who insists a beat writer tweet PBP is a clown, and Wetzel is speaking to that boss as much as young reporter/writer types. Wetzel tweets regularly, even during big events, just not every twenty seconds.

If you want to be seen as an intellectual like Wetzel, tweet like one, not a spastic stenographer. People don't follow Wetzel on Twitter because he's great at Twitter, they do it because of his body of work.

 

I now have a delightful new way to describe my job as a preps writer.

 

And somebody will be changing their SJ handle to "Spastic Stenographer" in 3 ... 2 ... 1 ...

 

I find Twitter helpful when I'm covering games, especially because I'm usually doing high school games. For instance if I'm covering a hockey game I'll tweet out goals and other, what I think are, salient observations. Also, I find it really helpful when I'm writing on deadline to be able to go back through my tweets and find something I forgot. Especially with flowing games like soccer, basketball, or hockey I find it really helpful to be able to look back and see "Jenkins out after Sanderson hit and Podunk doesn't look the same." IT jogs the memory and adds a layer to the story.