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ESPN has laid down the law when it comes to their employees tweeting about their jobs aka sports. Recently the WWL put forth a memo all but ending any reason to follow Ric Bucher, Mark Schlereth and Bill Simmons. Ok, Simmons is still ok to follow but are you really going to keep following Chris Mortensen?

While people speculate as to why ESPN cracked down on their employees use of scoial networking software it probably wasn't a single reason that precipitated this action. I am sure ESPN was worried about protecting their employees as well as ESPN/Disney's image. Having Mark Schlereth berate Chad Johnson on Twitter is not very professional (but really funny). 

But what is far more likely is that ESPN is worried about controlling their product, namely sports information. ESPN is really a multi-headed hydra of organization under an umbrella brand. Their newsroom is suppose to be top of the line --though they are backwards idiots when it comes to white football players getting in trouble with the law-- with an all-star cast of reporters and beat writers. However, the sheer nature of the ESPN beast encourages weak reporting. Think about it when was the last time a major story was broken by an ESPN reporter. Big Papi, Manny Ramirez and Alex Rodriguez weren't ESPN stories. Neither was Brett Farve's return to the NFL last year. But ESPN doesn't care about breaking news, they even admit it in their podcasts, they care about co-opting the story into their own with "instant reaction and analysis". Essentially their "news" department is really just a punditry farm for ESPN, ESPN 2, ESPN News, Sportscenter and ESPN Radio. ESPN's operating procedure is that of a blog, find content, aggregate it and make it your own. 

The bloated dragon model and how it keeps their reporters from reporting doesn't explain why they are worried about social media and its possible implications.

Twitter offers a unique service, instant dissemination of information (even benign personal stories) over a network of followers who are interested in you. Currently no one has any clue how to monetize followers which makes the whole situation worse. Thus when a reporter gives away information for free outside of ESPN's website, television or radio stations, ESPN isn't getting their chunk of change and that's the real issue in this crackdown. 

But this fact taps into the new media reality, a reality that ESPN has embraced with their second, third wave reporting that co-opts original reports by the New York Times or Sports Illustrated. The fact is that a great deal of sports reporting is rudimentary data points that don't require 1000 word article or even 400 word articles. They simply require a quick description of the facts as they are an update to an on-going story.

Here is another example from ProFootballTalk, 

Thirty words was all the story needed. Hell fourteen words would have sufficed. 

Basically "orginal reporting" is simply small data transfers like, Shaq traded to Cavs for X, Y and Z or Big Papi tested positive for steroids in 2003 or Michael Vick suspended 5 games etc. etc. The thing that actually requires the 1000 word article or 5 minute T.V. spot is the after action analysis and that is something ESPN and its chimera body have completely embraced, except for when the data point comes from Twitter, because Twitter is outside of ESPN's control.