Joe Ruiz

I don’t normally have my Windows Media Center turned on in the mornings, but a funny tweet from my friend Brett prompted me to turn on SportsCenter. A few minutes later, I hear the breaking news alert, so I come back to my computer and see the news that Manny Ramirez has been suspended by MLB for 50 games for a positive test of a performance-enhancing substance.

I react to the news, but my obvious first thought is to tweet it out. I dig around for the link from the LA Times — who broke the story and were credited by SportsCenter — and I find the tweet from the @latimes account (not to get off track, but link to your own story, @latimes, not the home page). I retweet @latimes (adding the shortened URL I’d just created to the story) and watch the coverage.

I get a retweet or two before the tweet from @espn surfaces.

Now, while it’d be nice to link directly to the source, I understand not doing so. @espn linked to its own article on its Web site. Again, that’s fine, but here’s what I see when I open the story.

ESPN.com correctly credited the Los Angeles Times with the story, but do you notice there’s no link to the story itself? The following two grafs (and maybe more, but that’s my screengrab) also credit the Times. How hard is it to link to the LAT story within your own copy? Is it a content management system issue? Is it just accepted from mainstream news sources that you credit, but don’t credit your source? There’s no excuse for not linking. Simple as that.

Here’s the other rub: As of 11:33 a.m., the @latimes account has 18,686 followers, while @espn has 99,378 followers. As the minutes passed, here was the standard tweet that came across my window from the interested of the 400 people I follow.

That link from @ChrisDuel went to the ESPN.com story. Again, I understand that with 80,000 more followers, there’s going to be far more people seeing @espn’s tweets than @latimes. Hell, I don’t follow the @latimes account, but I do follow @espn. What is so hard for ESPN.com news services (and other media outlets) to link? Bloggers are well-versed in quoting and linking. Is it a CMS issue? Something deeper? At my news organization’s Web site, we have to code links, but I do it anyway, especially if I have information from another source. The San Antonio Express-News reported a story of a City Council candidate being taken to task for claiming victories in her district from when she wasn’t on the council. We hadn’t reported that story, so I obviously can’t write the information without crediting the source. But it’s not just saying, “the SAEN reported,” they deserve their due. Give them the link.

The reason I link, especially since it appears it’s simply acceptable to credit the source, is because I believe it builds credibility with your online audience. If your news organization presents the most information possible for its readers, the readers will reward you with their trust and continued traffic. I’m a firm believer.

Last week, a tornado touched down in a nearby county. Two of the three TV stations kept their weather coverage going (break-ins or continuous coverage), but while I’m writing the story based off the calls we’d made, I notice a tweet from our competitor about damage to some homes. We had their coverage on our TV with the volume turned up, so I heard the sheriff they cited say what he said. Much as I did this morning, I retweeted. A few minutes later, I received a DM from a follower asking, “Is this the dawn of a new day? Are we seeing you RT the competition’s info? Social media breaks down the rules of traditional media.” I responded by saying the news is more important than the competition. When people want to know, especially when it comes to breaking news or severe weather, they want the info. They don’t care where they get it from as long as it’s a source they trust.

Minutes later, I see this blog post come from a local public relations firm (full disclosure: I co-founded a local Twitter-based lunch meetup group with one of this agency’s account executives and an editor from a business news organization).

But today, April 27, 2009, at 4 p.m. Central time, I saw something that turned that on its ear. The local ABC affiliate, KSAT 12, retweeted a news item from its NBC affiliate rival, News 4 WOAI. It involved the report of damage from a tornado that touched down in DeWitt County. Even more impressive than the retweet was the use of good Twitter etiquette as KSAT credited WOAI.

During my 20 years, I had thousands of my stories read verbatim on the air by talent that did nothing more than read the paper. So the giving of credit stunned me. My officemate, who spent 18 years in TV, commented that no station would EVER credit another station on air.

It shouldn’t have been a big shock. @ksatnews and @mySA (the account for the San Antonio Express-News) have been retweeting the others’ comments or stories when they’re relevant to our readers, but I will admit, it’s the first time I’ve retweeted @news4woai. At a business lunch later in the week, I explained my reasoning to a larger audience and had nothing but positive responses from those in attendance (I did have the standard, “Did you get in trouble?” question, but I’m lucky in that we feel the same way in our newsroom).

Back to Manny for a bit. It was pointed out to me that @ptishow (the Twitter account for ESPN’s “Pardon the Interruption”) linked to the LA Times story. (Thanks, @alansmodic.)

That’s great. It’s likely a human account whose muse is versed in digital media and how crediting works (or at least it should).

What I’m trying to say is that it shouldn’t be an issue to source another news organization’s work online. It builds credibility when you do so and it’s simply the right thing to do, especially when journalists and the media are fighting to keep and regain credibility in an already faltering industry. I’d love for ESPN.com to link to the LA Times when it comes to a big story (or any story, really), but I don’t see it happening anytime soon.

Tags: espn, espn.com, ksat 12, ksat.com, link economy, los angeles times, manny ramirez, media ethics, mysa.com, san antonio express news, sourcing, twitter, woai.com

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