Blogs with commentary and rumors, Facebook posts with notes from athletes, Twitter updates with scores, and even coach-specific YouTube channels represent some of the ways social media has changed sports and the way sports journalists do their jobs in recent years.
What do all the changes mean? And what’s next for the field?
Those questions and related issues will be addressed July 22 by professional journalists and scholars during an online chat and panel discussion coordinated by the Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication (AEJMC) and the John Curley Center for Sports Journalism at Penn State.
The hour-long chat begins at 12:30 p.m. with Marie Hardin, an associate professor and associate director of the Curley Center, serving as moderator. A link to the chat may be found at http://www.aejmc.com/topics/chat online.
Panelists include:
— Malcolm Moran, Knight chair in sports journalism and society at Penn State and director of the Curley Center;
— Viv Bernstein, New York Times contributing correspondent for sports and former staff writer at the Hartford Courant, Detroit Free Press and Raleigh News and Observer;
— Megan Heuter, founder of Women Talk Sports, an online social media network for fans of women’s sports; and
— Brad Schultz, associate professor and researcher on sports reporters and new media at the University of Mississippi.
The chat, part of the AEJMC "Hot Topics" series, will engage the panelists in a discussion of the ways social media has altered sports coverage. The panel will suggest the most relevant ethical issues for dialogue and research and will speculate on ways social media may change the training and expectations for sports journalists.
The John Curley Center for Sports Journalism, established in 2003 and housed in the College of Communications at Penn State, explores issues and trends in sports journalism through instruction, outreach, programming and research.
The Center’s undergraduate curricular emphasis includes courses in sports writing, sports broadcasting, sports information, sports, media and society, and sports and public policy, which is cross-listed with the Penn State Dickinson School of Law.
The Association for Education in Journalism and Mass Communication is a nonprofit organization of more than 3,700 educators, students and practitioners from around the globe. Founded in 1912, by Willard Grosvenor Bleyer, the AEJMC is the oldest and largest alliance of journalism and mass communication educators and administrators at the college level. AEJMC’s mission is to promote the highest possible standards for journalism and mass communication education, to encourage the widest possible range of communication research, to encourage the implementation of a multi-cultural society in the classroom and curriculum, and to defend and maintain freedom of communication in an effort to achieve better professional practice, a better informed public, and wider human understanding.