Friday, June 17th, 2011 at 3:53 pm  |  10 responses

NBA’s Evolving Relationship With Journalism

How our athletes are now celebrities.

The Marriage of Athlete Celebrity Journalism and the Future

Technology has made more immediate the global distribution of information and in the process everyone and anyone can express an opinion or present themselves as a reporter to an audience, including many who have no relationship with the people they are covering. There’s also the pressure of dealing with networks and sponsors. This seemed to be one of the rants that Cuban expressed in his blog.

The relationship between celebrity athlete and journalist may have changed over time.

“It was a working relationship,” Bucher said. “If you were in that group, you knew your job was to report news, positive or otherwise.”

As a result, athletes are slowly but surely distancing themselves from everyone. Despite all of the relationships being built athletes are going to still have a wall up and journalists know it.

“I think athletes are always going to be leery of journalists no matter what,” Daulerio said. “If athletes are not leery of some of the journalists that are covering them, those journalists are not doing their job.”

When an athlete’s mistake is publicized, it’s the job of agents, publicists, and other representatives to help craft and reshape the image of celebrity-athletes.

“If we feel a player is upset or may not be in the right frame of mind, we will try to shield or protect that player from potentially negative situations,” says Jonathan Rinehart.

“We also warn them if we know someone or something may be brought up so that they are prepared for what is coming and we will talk through way the best way to respond,” he added.

Ilana Nunn, Sr. Director of Public Relations & Marketing for Bill Duffy Associate Sports Management, an agency that represents Steve Nash, Yao Ming and Rajon Rondo says that making sure their client is knowledgeable of media and how to interact with media is a priority.

“Upon a client signing with us, we do a lot of research on them on YouTube, school websites, etc,” Nunn said.

BDA also recommends that their clients work with a communication trainer so that they are able to function in media functions and everyday people. The instructor helps them when they’re in loose situations in conversation.

“When you’re loose, you’re more yourself,” Nunn added.

The instructor uses improvisation, television shows and sitcoms to help them in those environments.

The major factors shaping modern sport and the modern sport star from the late 19th century to the present have been increasing professionalism, steadily rising media coverage, and growing commercial sponsorship. With this change, adjustments have been made to counter this.

Again, the relationship between sports, celebrity and journalism is not new, but the nature of the scope may be changing. TMZsport.com launching suggests the latest direction in the blurring between sports reporting and celebrity reporting.

Despite all of these changes, former Hofstra University guard Charles Jenkins isn’t too worried.

“I’ve watched so many people feed into the media and all of the attention that they get and it kind of affects the way that they play,” Jenkins said. “I’m not going to change any, I’m the same person that I was when walked in here my freshman year and that’s how I’m going to stay.”

The key to navigating through the new innovations of sports journalism for both the athlete and the journalist is maintaining some sort of professionalism.

Brandon Robinson began his sports journalism career at 12 years old with the NBA’s New Jersey Nets hosting the kids radio show, Nets Slammin’ Planet on New York radio. His show was featured on NBA Inside stuff with Ahmad Rashad, Hoop Magazine, MSG Network and Fox Sports Net. He has interviewed everyone from US governors, athletes and television personalities, earning the nickname, Scoop B. Brandon is a graduate from Hofstra University with a master’s degree in Journalism. You can follow him @ScoopB.

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  • MikeC.

    Very interesting piece. I used to think that the Knicks’ media policy of not allowing a team member or member of the coaching staff to speak to the media without a PR rep on hand was way too much. I completely understand why that practice is in place now. Some media members are doing their jobs by asking questions related to the game, team and league. Others are just trying to find out who player X is putting his dingdong into, and how they can spin that into a big controversy. I’m going to do my part to slow down the spread of junk reporting like TMZ. Any gossipy crap that does not impact the actual sport will no longer get my “click of approval”. If Lebron farts in public, I don’t care. If Lebron comes back next season without a post move, that’s comment-worthy.

    Suggestion for SLAM: maybe make another section of the site to post the gossip/celebrity lifestyle stuff. There are some people that want to know about that, so it still has its place. Just separate the posts like “Lebron buys a new house” from actual basketball articles like the mock drafts and trade suggestions, etc.

  • http://www.basketballartistry.com Dave White

    I agree with what you’re saying Mike. I like watching the games, reading analysis about the games, teams, players, etc., but it stops there for me. Players should be allowed to live their lives without people sticking their noses into everything.

  • MikeC.

    Nobody else read this article and found it interesting? Wow. That says a lot about the attention span of most of this site’s visitors. Was the article too long? Too many big words?

  • http://www.facebook.com/joe.l.brewer3 BlackPhantom

    I really liked the article. I thought it was very interesting.

  • http://www.bulls.com Enigmatic

    Nah, I sat down and read this whole thing and loved the article.
    Just didn’t really know how to comment on it.
    But it was a great read. SLAMOnline needs more epic pieces like this.

  • giogolo

    Interesting piece. The problems discussed in here between players and journalist has been the same all throughout the era’s and the answer has been their conclusion at the end. Everyone has to maintain a certain degree of professionalism. And cuban is right,there has to be a certain limit for media access to protect the players.

    Now tell me that this is gonna be followed? Highly doubt it. But remember, media is to the doctor here as the players are to the patients.they are in charge of reporting facts to a bigger group of people,the masses so they actually influence a lot of reactions and public perception in a major way more than the truth of what players did or not. So it’s you Slam that should be held more accountable into the relevance of your reports and should do a better job as what people have said here on the comments to comparmentalized what you deliver. Players,like patietns, can only be responsible to themselves basically. Media has more of the responsibility of taking care of the players and the information they put out by giving them atleast the respect of informing them what would be off the record during their conversations or any juicy info they get. atleast they have they should have the balls to inform that player beforehand before printing.

  • Quantumphysix

    Should be more basketball journalism on here more often. Love it!!

  • MikeC.

    Players have to be so much savvier than they used to be. It seems like back in the day, the writers had a line and if something a player said or did crossed that line, the writer just treated it as confidential and let the players be human beings. Unless of course the words or act were actually newsworthy and not just some gossipy crap. I’d love for things to be like they were about 15 years ago, when NBA athletes were famous, but not celebrities (if that makes sense). Players were allowed to get their wieners gobbled at strip clubs, testify in corruption trials *cough Patrick Ewing cough* and it was news for a couple days and then it was gone and those guys could go on with their lives. If Dwight Howard was even seen around a strip club, it would be a huge controversy. Let’s let people be people. Forget about gossipy trash and enjoy some boobies!

  • MikeC.

    @giogolo – I don’t necessarily view SLAM as needing to be held more accountable. SLAM is a business and their site drives revenue through advertisements on each story’s page. The more clicks an article gets, the more ad money comes in. We as readers need to speak with our ‘clicks’. Don’t click on gossipy crap articles any more. If they stop getting hits, they’ll stop generating money. If there’s no money to be made, those types of articles will die off. We’re the ones driving those kinds of articles by clicking on them in the first place.

  • giogolo

    @mike
    appreciate the thought MikeC..= ) i only used Slam as an example though who I really meant were the reporters and beat writers..and..those at TMZ. I guess we are all in it for the ride then..= ) It’s impossible not to click on those articles but ur suggestion again was good. Times are indeed changing and every innovation has it’s pros and cons. who wud have a thought a guy like me 3000 miles away cud learn such info even from slam’s comment section about things not included in the articles. decades ago it wuldnt be possible. So I guess it’s fair then, if bball players get to be celebrities and earn crzy amount of money they get to lose thier priv life. So does Media have the right to earn from them and $capitalize$ on their mistakes?

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