Do you know what day Miguel Cotto opened camp for his upcoming fight with Manny Pacquiao? How about what time Paul Williams usually heads to the gym on weekdays? Any idea what weight-loss progress Cristobal Arreola has made for his match with Vitali Klitschko? Do you know Andre Berto’s plans for Sunday morning?
You could. No, not by reading your local newspaper’s semi-annual boxing article or scouring magazine racks. Not on radio or ESPN2’s “Friday Night Fights” either.
Just follow these guys with a Twitter account. And they’ll tell you themselves. What’s more, if you put the ‘@’ symbol in front of their usernames and keep your inquiries respectful and under 140 characters in length, there’s a real good chance they’ll reply to you directly.
If you’re thinking a new technology with a childish name just took another enormous chunk out of journalism’s eroding bluff, you’re right. And judging by other trends, you’re also three to five years ahead of media conglomerates in recognizing the scope of this internet thing.
Before we get to that, though, here are the answers to the above quiz. @RealMiguelCotto’s first day of training was Aug. 3 (he even posted pictures). @PPunisherWill heads to the gym in the early afternoons. As of Wednesday, @theenightmare has lost 15 pounds. And @AndreBerto spends Sunday mornings in church and occasionally comes out tweeting Scripture.
Now then, if you make your living transcribing interviews with athletes, should you be nervous? No doubt. Why should a fan with direct access to his favorite athlete pay you to ask questions that leave him merely inferring character?
What about news sources where real reporting gets done? Surely they’re safe from a site where Kristen and Margot arrange rides to the mall. Not quite. The athletes, after all, aren’t the only ones going around reporters. Promoter Top Rank’s page of tweets – @trboxing – is at least as likely to break a Pacquiao-Mayweather fight story as your favorite reporter is. And get this: Even if your favorite reporter does break the story, he’s probably going to pass the news to you in a 140-character tweet before he tries to get 500 words past his editor.
In June, Twitter surpassed its predecessor social networks like MySpace and Facebook when Iran’s presidential election was indicted by tweets coming out of Tehran via cell phones. It was similar to the legitimacy the Indian Ocean tsunami bestowed on alternative news sources in 2004.
Oblivious of irony, American media outlets and corporations began implementing anti-Twitter policies immediately thereafter. If college kids with cell phones could temporarily raze Mahmoud Ahmadinejad’s authority what might a few rogue employees do to corporate brands? And brands must be protected. After all, how else can we get American consumers to pay for information?
Wait a minute. When was the last time anyone paid for information? Newspapers’ short-sighted greed undid that model 10 years ago. You might remember their thinking went like this: “If we create a website and drive up ‘eyeballs,’ we can charge advertisers a second time. Our existing subscribers? Oh, they love the feel of newsprint too much to cancel.” Right.
Now’s the time for an outraged scribe to slam his fist and shout, “There will always be a market for good writing!” If that’s actually true, this column is hardly an exemplar of it.
How much did you pay to read that last sentence – complete with a nifty word like “exemplar”?
The truth we’re wont to avoid is this: Aside from pornographers, who has ever profitably monetized online content? Go ahead and name your favorite sites. Now ask how much you pay them in subscription fees. That’s right, most of them are kept afloat by advertising revenue.
Last week Rupert Murdoch, chairman of News Corp, owner of numerous publications including The Times and The Wall Street Journal, announced he’s planning to charge for every one of his companies’ websites. It’s the newspaper industry’s last stand and a good idea. But as much as I’ll miss Peggy Noonan’s Friday columns at Online.WSJ.com, I’ll still be able to read David Brooks and Paul Krugman for free at NewYorkTimes.com and George Will and Richard Cohen at WashingtonPost.com – sites whose page views will increase once News Corp’s sites go behind a password.
There’s one other problem with Murdoch’s noble idea. It is almost impossible to charge for a product that has already been given away. Capitalism’s idea, not mine: Every commodity must become cheaper at every moment.
Then is Twitter the end of writing? No chance. Financial considerations can be put to the side when discussing the future of writing because too many talented people have and will always write out of compulsion more than profession.
“But 140 characters at a time?” you say. “I can’t say anything intelligent in 140 characters!”
If you believe that, you’re right. But writing – any art, for that matter – is about transcending arbitrary limitations. Whether it’s the attention span of audience farmers, the cost of ink or the meter of a couplet, the best writers overcome the constraints that cripple ordinary men’s imaginations.
Shakespeare, after all, didn’t find the sonnet and say, “Fourteen lines! What the hell can I say about human nature in 14 lines?”
Look, nobody knows where all this is going. In bygone days we would have blithely tossed this important question – like so many others – to the free-market god, to which we bowed like Athenians before Zeus. But that was a bad idea even back when the market was free.
For today, then, we muddle through with open minds while tweeting our favorite prizefighters. If Twitter is here to stay, someone will teach us a way to use it brilliantly.
