Trash Tweeting

Twitter micro blogging is the latest trend amongst Athletic communication offices across the country. St. John’s has done a great job of staying ahead of the curve by adding social media to the University. They were the first school to credential a Twitter writer in Peter Robert Casey. We saw the first real glimpse of St. John’s Twitter when the basketball team traveled to Canada for their Labor Day Preseason tournament. The witty short play by play blurbs were entertaining and also informative to read. St. John’s really did an A+ job north of the border keeping the fans in touch with everything that went on.

Outside of St. John’s, Twitter has caused quite a stir around the sports’ world from coaches and athletes Tweeting and what their respective leagues think about it. The New York Jets embrace Twitter as a part of their franchise while David Stern is thinking about implementing a Twitter Policy for NBA players. Stern was quoted saying, “We just need to make sure when it’s OK to Tweet and when it’s not OK to Tweet so it at least focuses around the game,” he said. “It would look unusual for a guy sitting on the bench to pick up his cell phone, and I think we can agree that he probably shouldn’t be writing e-mails. It’s not about Twitter; it’s about the line of communication. That’s what we’re focusing on.

“We’re happy to let it play out to see if it merits all the attention that it’s getting. We don’t want to overreact.”

I think Stern has a point in the fact that there must be some guidelines set so the image of the NBA isn’t misrepresented by one of it’s players’ Tweets. This brings me back to St. John’s and their recent Twitter activity.

Since the Torch, the school’s student ran newspaper, broke the story of the identity of the school’s new mascot which sort of stole the school’s “thunder” so to speak as they planned to release the mascot’s identity at the soccer game the following day.

St. John’s Basketball’s Twitter responded almost immediately after with a tweet,

So it seemed that St. John’s wasn’t exactly happy with the student operated newspaper. Perhaps the Torch overstepped it’s bounds by posting privileged information a little early or maybe it was just good journalism? Either way I think St. John’s should have been the bigger person, talked to them internally if it was indeed a problem or just let it slide and let the student’s have their moment in the sun.

The sensitivity of St. John’s Twitter was on display again as they Tweeted in response to messages that were posted on theSt. John’s Redmen forum that the new mascot looked very similar to the St. Joe’s Hawk.

The Tweet was less than an hour after post on the message board. 2:46 to 3:38.

Deadspin did a follow up on their original piece covering the St. John’s Mascot contest. St. John’s responded pretty well to this on their Twitter. STJ_Basketball laughed at themselves which was at least a little bit better than sounding bitter as they did previously.

After this is where things started getting trashy. The Torch wrote this morning “Everyone’s Squakin’ about the bird” which gave some student reactions to the new mascot. Nothing newsbreaking or earth shattering about the article but St. John’s reaction was pretty classless. St. John’s Tweets,

The sarcasm overtone is evident and ultimately unnecessary however this wasn’t as bad as the next tweet which was in response to another Torch article posted today.

The Torch wrote, Mason, Jr.’s True Life offers nothing Storm fans don’t already know which summed up the fact that there wasn’t too much Mason on MTV’s special. For all the hype the show received and for as long as the cameras followed Mase around it really didn’t go into too much detail. What do you expect from an hour show?

St. John’s Tweets in response to the article,

Wow! Low blow by the University to rip a student writer of the University. Why? I don’t see the need for this nor do I think it’s right of the University to allow this either. The kid is a volunteer for the student newspaper and puts in a lot of time into running the paper as he is learning and studying his future craft. Even if he were a professional writer it would still be in poor taste for the University to respond like this. Another Twitter poster asked the University why did it hate the Torch so much and STJ_Basketball responded,

So it’s ok to be insulting as long as you say, Just kidding, later on? I’m pretty disappointed in St. John’s and think they should implement some type of Tweet policy to avoid looking so classless in the future.

As to the Torch, you have Johnny Jungle’s full support. Keep writing and don’t let the school bully you into filtering your content! You’re doing a great job of covering the program and keeping students informed on what is going on.

As to St. John’s, Stay Classy! Try apologizing