Akron Beacon Journal | NBC Sports
Before football coach Urban Meyer’s press conference Monday, Ohio State spokesman Jerry Emig laid down a ground rule for reporters: No using Twitter during Meyer’s conferences.
Akron Beacon Journal reporter Jason Lloyd says the move “reeks of a power-hungry program flexing a little muscle in a rare area where they don’t have any.”
After speaking with a couple of the school’s media relations people, the reasoning ranged from the success they had banning Twitter during some closed practices over the summer to how reporters can’t really listen to the news conference if they’re constantly tweeting what Meyer is saying.
My job is to decipher what is worthy of reporting instantly on Twitter and what is worth saving for later. I don’t need OSU officials to make the decision for me.
The press conference aired on the radio, Rick Chandler reports. Presumably listeners were free to tweet during the broadcast.
In an email to Poynter, Ohio State University spokesperson Jerry Emig said the request was a “twitter delay,” not a ban.
Out of courtesy to those who were there asking the questions and to those being interviewed, I simply asked those in attendance to not tweet while an interview was taking place.
It was the first weekly press conference of the season, and it didn’t register to me at the time that it was going to be broadcast live by WBNS 97.1 FM the Fan and streamed on OhioStateBuckeyes.com. Once I was reminded of this – after the press conference – I realized that courtesy or no courtesy, we can’t ask people to delay tweeting. So even though many in attendance were supportive, we won’t ask to delay tweeting any longer.
Earlier: Ohio State student journalists got threats over coverage of the previous coach (Poynter)
