{"id":301,"date":"2015-04-27T12:14:05","date_gmt":"2015-04-27T16:14:05","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/?p=301"},"modified":"2015-04-27T12:14:05","modified_gmt":"2015-04-27T16:14:05","slug":"cant-we-all-just-get-along","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/2015\/04\/27\/cant-we-all-just-get-along\/","title":{"rendered":"Can’t We All Just Get Along?"},"content":{"rendered":"

“You don’t really need us”…Us,<\/em>\u00a0according to Kevin Gregg<\/a> of the Boston Red Sox,\u00a0\u00a0<\/em>happens to be the media relations people associated with any sports team…It says here nothing could be further from the truth…<\/span>But while twitter and other social media sites have opened access to athletes, the P.R. types are still your best source of contact with the players…<\/p>\n

For students who’ve never been in that locker room setting Gregg and Eric Tosi<\/a> of the Boston Bruins had valuable advice at the just recent Boston University Sports Journalism Seminar….”If you’ve been given the opportunity to cover a team, you have a lot of talent, said Tosi, also the Executive Producer of the Bruins television show “Behind the B”<\/a>… That’s pretty high praise at any point in your career…<\/p>\n

Media Relations types were, for a very long time, the sole source of team and player information…What these very same teams found out was that they could “break” the news themselves without first dishing it to the local media outlets…It started with faxes but as much as that spread the news, the teams didn’t have direct access to the fans….Enter the website, enter Twitter…And make no mistake, it had an affect on the local stations (radio and t-v) who found themselves being scooped…”What you’re seeing now is that more teams are controlling their own news and they are becoming their own news outlet”, said Tosi…Maybe that opening line should be reversed, at least as far as disseminating information goes, “We don’t really need YOU!”…..<\/p>\n

But of course they do…Teams still need to get the story out …They rely on the people who cover the team to keep them in the public’s attention….<\/p>\n

At some point in every sports journalist’s career there comes the point where you’re want to cover a game, a game perhaps outside our regular beat…And you’ll need the access to do it… Gaining that access means calling the “keepers of the gate”…As you might imagine, Gregg gets many calls to cover the Olde Town team and it’s not always possible for him to say yes, especially for people he’s never met, “I would do some research on my own to see what they have written, check any references that are available. \u00a0I would be protective of the clubhouse (however). \u00a0I may arrange for something away from the clubhouse, you want to avoid people being in there who are unfamiliar so the players are uncomfortable. \u00a0And, oh yes, no pictures with the players!”…<\/p>\n

Tosi and Gregg can be your best friends, your worst nightmares…”Be approachable, if you build a relationship based on trust with these guys, that’s the main way to succeed”, advised Gregg…Tosi added, “You don’t want it ever to be adversarial. \u00a0There are going to be times when we tell you no. \u00a0But that’s just the reality of it”…<\/p>\n

We spent a lot of time this semester introducing you to issues and situations you’ve perhaps never experienced, never thought of…hopefully your “media relation-ship” is a good one….<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

“You don’t really need us”…Us,\u00a0according to Kevin Gregg of the Boston Red Sox,\u00a0\u00a0happens to be the media relations people associated with any sports team…It says here nothing could be further from the truth…But while twitter and other social media sites have opened access to athletes, the P.R. types are still your best source of contact […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":901,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/901"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=301"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":302,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/301\/revisions\/302"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=301"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=301"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.bu.edu\/fshorr\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=301"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}