Cutting Through The Clutter

Every good journalist tries to ask the hard-hitting questions, to get the quotes that would sell newspapers. But trying to get an interesting soundbite from a football player is like extracting water from a stone.

The clubs prevent their players from saying anything that could affect the image of the player or the club. Add this to the fact that most players aren't very interesting to start with.

But new media cuts through all the PR haze and taps straight into the footballer's brain. With Twitter, players can broadcast exactly what they're doing or thinking, without any filter, warts and all.

Take Sunderland striker Darren Bent's Twitter as an example. He posts regular updates, and in July, when a move to Sunderland was delayed due to the chairman of his former club, Daniel Levy, considering more offers, his frustration showed.

Seriously getting p***** off now
Why can’t anything be simple. It’s so frustrating hanging round doing jack s***.
Do I wanna go Hull City NO. Do I wanna go stoke NO do I wanna go sunderland YES so stop f****** around, Levy.

These were the updates he posted on his Twitter account. I think while this may not be the best example, new media is an avenue for these previously bland footballers to show their personality without any obfuscation by PR people in the club.

New media once again showcases its potential for giving anyone their own loud voice.

Arsenal news for the Arsenal fan

As an Arsenal fan, it can be hard to come by in-depth analysis and coverage about my favourite club in traditional media.

Newspapers and magazines naturally have to take a broad, all-encompassing approach to the coverage of football, putting in match reports and news articles that are written from a neutral viewpoint.

But with new media comes new opportunities to have a specialized voice. Writers can write about exactly what they want.

This allows websites like Arseblog and Gunnerblog to have a very specific focus. They are blogs dedicated solely to the coverage of news, matches and other matters Arsenal-related.

This means that Arsenal fans have a clear place to go to get their fix of Arsenal-related news and comment pieces.

Without the lack of bias that the editorial constraints of a newspaper or magazine bring, the bloggers are free to inject humour and their own voice into their pieces, and on occasion, be as hilariously tongue-in-cheek biased as possible.

Take this comparison between Soccernet and Arseblog as an example of how a blogger can put his own spin on a news story:

Soccernet
Arsenal have confirmed that midfielder Alexandre Song has signed a new long-term contract with the club.

Arseblog
The club officially confirmed that Alex Song has signed a new contract which will keep him at the club until 2014, apparently. 2014 seems like a ridiculously futuristic date to me.
I know it's only 5 years away but if I cast my mind back to when I was a lad, kicking a football around Bushy Park in the 80s, the whole idea of 2014 would have conjured up ideas of all kinds of awesome technology - and I don't mean iPhones or really thin laptops.
I mean flying cars and robot butlers who can make delicious meals with voice commands and houses that talk to you and transporters like Star Trek. You know, properly cool stuff, and not just regular cars which look a bit nicer and have a bit of a computerised display. Car manufacturers suck.

I feel that this illustrates clearly how new media offers an interestingly innovative way of letting people get exactly what information they want, in an intriguingly presented fashion.

The Goalposts Have Moved

You move the goalposts, you change the rules of football, which is what new media is doing - changing the rules of football coverage.

Where in the past news was restricted to whatever newspaper editors wanted to fit in their column inches, and goal footage was a precious commodity sought after on TV, the Internet has allowed for as much news and footage as rabid fans can lap up.

One site which I feel exemplifies this is 101 Great Goals .

The website links to clips of goals scored from all around the world that are uploaded on various video hosting websites like YouTube.

Updated almost daily, it's a great resource for interesting incidents and goals from matches as big as England v Brazil, to obscure ones like Iraq v Azerbaijan.

This valuable repository of links allows any web user to view any important goal scored whenever he feels like it. This is a sharp contrast to how goals are shown in the traditional media, ie on television.

On channels like ESPN and Football Channel, the goals are shown on highlights programmes, or on news programmes like SportsCentre. This means that viewers can only see the goals at predetermined times, and only the goals which the channels see fit to showcase.

This shows that the new media offers an incredible amount of choice for the user - to view exactly what he wants, when he wants.

Celebrating this uniqueness of the new media is what we should be aiming for in SIWM.