Local sports message boards

Greensboro has a bunch of local blogs that sometimes delve into sports, and there's one solely devoted to sports. I'll comment from time to time, depending, and mostly just to answer questions about our coverage. My ground rules:

* Always post under your real name. You're representing the paper, after all.
* Stick to the facts, not opinion.
* Don't feed the trolls.
* Don't blog angry/no flaming.

One example: A local blogger was ripping our columnist for a piece he wrote about Tom O'Brien going from BC to State. His specific point was that our guy should have mentioned Bobby Ross, who went from Maryland to N.C. State. (Our guy had made the point that the intra-ACC move was the first in 50 years.) I pointed out that Ross didn't count because he had gotten a couple of paychecks from the Buffalo Bills in between College Park and Raleigh.

When the local blogger came back with some variation of "Yeah, your columnist is still wrong ..." I didn't respond.

There might be a lesson in there somewhere. Just remember to pick your battles.

P.S. I stay out of the fan boards for the same reason I try not to make eye contact with crazy people. I wouldn't tell my folks not to venture onto the fan boards - they just be honest about who they are, not scoop the paper or the Web site and stick to the facts.

 

One of my colleagues not only posts on message boards (including one hosted by the competing paper), he brags about it at the office. He seems to revel in anonymous people calling him names... as long as he can call them the same names right back.

I don't know if he actually signs his name to the posts. I suspect not, though I'd guess most of the regular visitors know it's him (because he also brags about that!)

He also has a very popular high school sports blog on our site. I think he deletes the posts that call him names off of it though. :

 

Allow me to post this again:

We follow Josh into his BULLPEN AREA where we see Donna, Bonnie, Ginger, and Margaret gathered around Donna’s computer laughing and whispering.

JOSH
What's going on?

GINGER
Hi, sugar lips.

JOSH
I'm sorry?

MARGARET
Donna struck gold.

JOSH
What is it?

BONNIE
LemonLyman.com.

JOSH
What is it?

DONNA
It's your fan site.

JOSH
What are you talking about?

DONNA
There's a website devoted to all things "Josh."

JOSH
You're kidding me.

DONNA
No.

JOSH
LemonLyman.com?

DONNA
You have fans, Josh. Not many of them from the looks of it, but what they lack in numbers, they more than make up for in fervor.

JOSH
What do they talk about?

DONNA
You. You on "Capitol Beat." You on "Meet the Press." You in "US News" and "World Report."

BONNIE
Well, there's also the section called "Sightings about Town."

DONNA
This is reserved for actual Josh encounters of the third kind. Most of which seem to have taken place in restaurants and haberdasheries to which you've never been, unless you're leading a double life, and I think we both know you're not that clever.

JOSH
LemonLyman.com.

DONNA
Right now, we're viewing the section devoted to the Josh Fantasy Date. This, it should painfully self-explanatory, is where the women, and more then a few men I gotta say, discuss what they would do with you if...

JOSH
All right, can everybody who doesn't work here, please go work where they work.

MARGARET
I want to work here now.

JOSH
You can get this at your own desk.

MARGARET
You better believe it.

DONNA
See you at lunch.

Margaret, Ginger and Bonnie leave.

DONNA
All right, you've got Senior Senior Staff at C.O.S., then Senior staff in the Roosevelt Room. There's a meeting with the economic team to pre-brief for Fed Chair, and that's followed immediately by Advance, State, and NSC to go over the next six months of foreign travel.

JOSH
Let me look at this thing.

He leans over Donna and tries to look at the web site on her computer.

DONNA
Josh...?

JOSH
Right. Yes. Let me know when C.J.'s briefing starts.

(later)

JOSH
Donna!

DONNA
Yeah?

JOSH
Sit down we’re gonna post a response on the site.

DONNA
What site?

JOSH
LemonLyman...

DONNA
No.

JOSH
Yeah, we got to post a response to someone.

DONNA
It's a bad idea.

JOSH
Why?

DONNA
You don't know these people.

JOSH
Neither do you.

DONNA
Oh, yes, I do.

JOSH
What's wrong with them?

DONNA
Nobody knows.

JOSH
These are people taking a very healthy interest in government. They should be applauded.

DONNA
Then applaud them, but stay off the site.

JOSH
These are the people talking. I'm not an elitist.

DONNA
You are an elitist.

JOSH
I am an elitist, but I have respect for people who don't measure up.

DONNA
People on these sites tend to be a little hysterical.

JOSH
We've got to correct something.

DONNA
What?

JOSH
Irmatrude writes, "Three nights ago on Nightline Josh said, 'We'll be asking for a GAO study of Medicare drug pricing.' Apparently, no one's told Josh that only Congress can ask the GAO to do anything." First of all, how cool is that, that they know what the GAO can and can't do?

DONNA
Oh, it's cool as all giddy up.

JOSH
Sit down.

DONNA
Please don't do this.

JOSH
Sit down. Irmatrude... Thanks for watching me on Nightline. Yes, I do know that only Congress can instruct the GAO. When I said, "We'll be asking," I meant Democrats and not the White House. Thank you for your concern, Josh "Lemon" Lyman.

DONNA
Are you sure you want to sign-off like that?

JOSH
It's playful.

DONNA
Okay.

JOSH
You could get more in the spirit of this, you know.

DONNA
The people.

JOSH
Yes.

DONNA
What Josh doesn't know is that some of these people haven't taken there medication. Let's watch what happens now.

(continued)

 

(later)

Josh is sitting at his desk looking at a computer screen.

JOSH
Donna?

DONNA (OS)
Yeah?

JOSH
Something weird has happened here.

Donna appears in doorway.

DONNA
Where?

JOSH
LemonLyman....

DONNA
No.

JOSH
They don't seem to be taking my response in the spirit in which it was intended.

DONNA
Yeah.

JOSH
Seems to be a very unusual social structure. For instance, there is leader who seems to pride herself on her organizational skills and a certain amount of discipline.

DONNA
Right. That's what's called a control freak.

JOSH
[getting visibly upset] Well, she does seems to do an awful lot of scolding. "You've posted in the wrong place. Stay on topic people. Don't use capital letters. I don't have time to tell you twice," when clearly, she does have time to tell us twice. But that's not the problem.

DONNA
No.

Josh clears his throat then begins to read a post on the LemonLyman Board.

JOSH
"Someone need to deal with Josh's planet-sized ego, by teaching him government 101. Who made him overlord of the Democratic party?" And someone else writes, "Is Josh delusional, or is he actively trying to destroy the separation of powers?"

DONNA
Well, are you?

Josh
No.

DONNA
Then turn off the computer, shut these people up, and let's go back to work.

JOSH
I think I need to clarify my original post.

DONNA
Josh, there's a prime-time press conference tomorrow and a new energy policy that you have spent months shepherding down the field, and now, on the one-yard line...

JOSH
Sit down in the chair.

DONNA
Has the pressure for you to get the energy package...?

JOSH
Sit down in the chair.

DONNA
I think you've gone 'round the bend.

JOSH
I'm dictating now. I don't think it falls under the category of "outrageous" to suggest that I might have friends on the other end of the Avenue who have the phone number of the GAO. Let me put this more plainly. The White House can get a GAO review of anything it wants without posing a threat to the separation of powers. And I believe I'll use capital, lowercase, or Sanskrit, right up until the moment the font police cuff me and read me Miranda!

DONNA
That'll show them.

JOSH
See, I think these are good people, by and large, but they've come under the thumb of a dictatorial ruler. So, as with a small, Central American country, my role is to incite the people to topple her

DONNA
You're way round the bend. Can I get you a damp towel or something?

JOSH
No, but do we have any Yoo-Hoo?

DONNA
Yeah.

JOSH
I'll take one.

DONNA
I'm on it.

(later)

Josh walks past Donna then notices her and comes back.

JOSH
The Internet people have gone crazy.

DONNA
[sarcastically] You're kidding.

The two of them start to walk together.

JOSH
They're calling the GAO "General Josh's Standing Army", and saying I don't understand it's mandate and purpose. They're saying if I could get a review of anything I want, that I should start by reviewing the job of Deputy C.O.S. Then one guy compares me to a poor man's Clark Clifford, and a page and a half of posts, debating whether or not I was mocking Egyptians with the Sanskrit reference.

They come to a halt.

DONNA
[snappishly] I told you they were hysterical.

JOSH
I thought you meant they were funny.

DONNA
They're not.

They start walking again, voices rising.

JOSH
I know they're not! It's "Lord of the Flies" in there.

DONNA
Well, who invited you in the first place?

JOSH
It's got my name on it. Look, I don't want to hear about it anymore. [glances at his watch]
We got an energy plan in ten minutes. I'm gonna...

He starts to walk away, and C.J. comes up the HALLWAY behind him.

C.J.
Oh Josh!

JOSH
Yeah?

He turns and waits as she walks towards him.

C.J.
The Federal Page of the Washington Post just called Carol to confirm that you're the Josh Lyman who stated on an Internet website that the White House could order a GAO review on anything it wants.

JOSH
Without threatening the separation of powers is what I was saying.

C.J.
You posted on a web site?

Donna emerges from a door behind C.J., and they exchange a look.

JOSH
I was communicating with the people.

C.J.
Really?

Josh is momentarily distracted watching Donna walk past him into his office. Then he steps closer to C.J. and speaks in a hushed voice.

JOSH
C.J., it's a... crazy place. It's got this dictatorial leader, who I'm sure wears a muumuu and chain smokes Parliaments. [makes a smoking gesture with his fingers]

C.J.
What did you go there for in the first place?

JOSH
It's called LemonLyman.com.

C.J. gives him a pointed shove in the direction of his office. They walk a few paces and stop outside the doorway.

C.J.
Let me explain something to you, this is sort of my field. The people on these sites? They're the cast of "One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest."

Donna picks up her jacket inside the office and walks out between the two of them.

C.J. [cont]
The muumuu wearing Parliament smoker? That's Nurse Ratched. When Nurse Ratched is unhappy, the patients are unhappy. You? You're McMurphy. You swoop in there with your card games and your fishing trips...

JOSH
[shrugging defensively] I didn't swoop in, I came in exactly the same way everybody else did.

C.J.
Well, now I'm telling you to open the ward room window and climb on out before they give you a pre-frontal lobotomy, and I have to smother you with a pillow.

Josh regards her in silence for a moment.

JOSH
You're Chief Brom-

C.J.
I'm Chief Bromden, yes, at this particular moment. I'm assigning an intern from the press office to that web site. They're going to check it every night before they go home. If they discover you've been there, I'm going to shove a motherboard so far up your ass...

Josh looks down at the floor.

C.J.
What?

JOSH
[with a slight shrug] Well... technically, I outrank you.

C.J.
[shouting] So far up your ass!

JOSH
[quickly] Okay.

 

Johnny, might your last initial be a V (JDV)? Because that was the longest post I've ever seen.

 

Thanks for that, JD. I remember that scene vividly, and it was fantastic.

 

So just me, huh?

A quick question: Are people just assuming it would be bad, or do you have evidence? I'm not making accusations, just curious.

Maybe the prep and Badgers fans in Wisconsin just aren't quite as crazy as other places.

 

I've only seen one instance where it turned ugly. I mentioned it in one of my earlier posts, a competitor openly posted his thoughts about certain teams. The next game I saw him at, the fans did not stop yelling at him before and after the game. Even the team's announcer gave him the cold shoulder. All he could do was bite his lip and take it.

I think in preps more than any beat, the fans are irrational because they are both fans and parents. If you knock a team, they take it SO much more personal.

 

I work with BBAM and, like him, post on our message boards using my real name and column mug. Allow me to explain why:

All too often in this business, we suffer from an Ivory-tower mentality. We look down our noses at our readers as beneath us or less than us, particularly when they dare to criticize our work. I'm not defending those morons who call up and cuss you out for not writing about their kid or the kook who calls and blames you for the Cubs not being on TV.

I'm talking about the people who ask reasonable questions (per BBAM: how we select our all-area teams from a 70-plus schools, how we select which games to cover, etc.) These are reasonable people who, when given a reasonable answer will provide a reasonable response such as, "I can respect that" or "I don't agree, but I see what you're saying" etc.

Now, before you go painting with the wide brush that all sports message boards are filled with fan-boy kooks, look at this board. On this board, there are a multitude of good people with good insight. There are also kooks. We try to ignore the kooks. Same principle on a sports message board.

I was actually the guinea pig for our shop. I had been posting on our message boards for about five years, the first two anonymously (and not about paper-related topics) and the last three as I do now: real name and column mug.

In 2006, our Message Board/IT guy offered me a chance to become a moderator on our high-school message board because he was running out of people he trusted and the hits on our Board were going through the roof. I accepted, but he wanted to clear it through our SE first.

My SE was clueless as to what I was doing (probably not the best way to do things) and immediately put a stop to me doing anything message-board related. But our IT guy, in an effort to help me regain my posting privileges, came up to the SE's office and showed him how search for all my posts (because the Boss had no idea how to do it). Once he saw that my posts were eithering answering questions or basic blogs, his tune changed. These are the ground-rules we came up with:

1) Any reporter that wants to post can do so, but they must use their real name and column mug-For obvious reasons. At last check, five of our reporters were posting following these guidelines and getting positive feedback.

2) Don't start shit/get into pissing matches-As someone pointed out, no one ever wins these things. You either answer a legitimate question, make a relevant point or post a "blog" or you otherwise ignore everything else, especially the kooks. We've been very successful with this save for one hot-button issue. Last year, the IHSA decided to move from a two-class system in almost every sport to a three/four-class system. It was vigorously debated everywhere, especially our message boards, and our Prep Sports Editor, who fought passionately against the change, had a hard time avoiding fights on the boards for a while. That's been the only hiccup.

3) Reporters cannot be moderators-I fought hard against this, but had to concede to get everything else I wanted. Basically, my boss wanted two things: 1) No reporters and moderators; 2) Copy editors to check all posts. Once he realized how many reporters would post, he dropped No.2. His view of moderating was also skewed. He believed that reporters moderating would be tempted to remove negative posts about our paper and its stories. But even our moderators now, who are just dedicated posters from the board, are instructed not to do that and they don't. When we take heat on the boards, it stays out there for all to see.
My argument was that we could lighten the load on our IT guy and his staff and actually put people with knowledge of the message board, sports in general and our newspaper in a position to put that knowledge to good use.

In my view (and I think BBAM will agree), it's been very successful. I've gotten nothing but positive feedback about my participating, I've met some wonderful new people and I've developed a very reliable network of sources. There's not much that goes on sporting-wise in my neck of the woods that I don't know about. It's an incredible tool.

Hope this helps and feel free to check out our boards at www.pjstarforums.com/sports

 

Q Man: Great post.

Like I said, I've done it in both a prep forum serving our coverage area and one for our regional DI college team. Both have been outstanding experiences.

I find it interesting that nobody answered the question I posed about whether people were just assuming it would be a disaster or if they have actual evidence it woud.
Either those people stopped reading this thread, or ...

 

I answered it wisports. Check above.

 

Thanks, Ty. I actually did see that. My bad for saying 'nobody.'

BTW, you and Carl Spackler have the best under-avatar sigs. I give the slight edge to yours.