Imagine if the controversial award-winning radio talk show host’s infamous 2004 comment about the Rutgers’ womens’ basketball team appeared like this:
Talkshowguy533— ‘That’s some nappy-headed hos!’

Listed at the end of a Web article in complete anonymity, the risqué shock jock would still be spewing discourse on Imus in the Morning. On CBS radio at least.

Imus, however, made his racially insensitive remark in an improper (or proper?) forum and paid for it. As an anonymous commenter, he not only would have voiced his right to free speech, but probably would have found others that agree equally with what he said.

I’m all for anonymity at the ends of posts. Sure, it’s usually a rather caveman-ish discussion, but it’s also brutally honest. And in an age of PR-scripted press conferences (see Woods, Tiger) and politically correct terminology (introducing “waste management”), isn’t it refreshing to see how people really feel about a topic?

After this past week’s hot-button topic about the animated show South Park v. the nation of Islam, I would think most Americans would be leaning towards free speech rather than censorship. You don’t have to live in fear over the repercussions for speaking your mind or even uttering satirically if they are posted anonymously.

The best thing going for these candid online discussions is that they can still be moderated by whoever so desires; leave the f-bombs out and include the incendiary colloquialism.

While Imus has never been one to shy away from phrases which raise a public eyebrow— having once called Fox News’ Tucker Carlson “a bow-tie wearing pussy”— the proverbial fuse for such public ravings is growing considerably shorter year after year.

That’s why anonymous Web commenting should not only be allowed, but given leeway to flourish.

As with anything, most decisions will be left to individual websites. The New Yorker will most definitely take a different stance than TMZ, but that’s okay because each has its own respective followers. I would naturally expect a different level of discussion about a one percent rise in sales tax on poultry than I would about Brangelina’s latest African adoption. You choose, you discuss.

The most important thing to realize is that even though these commenters are anonymous to each other, they are not anonymous to the website which hosts the discussion or the intelligence operatives of our government.

Commenters must leave an email address at minimum, if not more information, before they are allowed to comment. If the comment is so brazen that it requires follow-up—“I am going to kill the President!”—authorities can track an IP address. Even the words I just wrote will be tracked and assessed for context.

So who cares if people want to run off a 140 character anti-Semitic remark? I don’t. Our country is about freedom. The internet is about uniting people from all walks of life, anywhere on the planet, at any time.

It’s not the collision of forced camaraderie that’s the problem for most folks. It’s the inane, profane responses which stimulate the limbic system the way tickling a grizzly bear incites death. That says more about the individual person and his or her level of education than the forum in which the comment was delivered. When you’re picking up eggs at a grocery store, you check the eggs and if one is cracked, you find one that’s not. Same thing here; skip over the inebriated pundits.

I think some people relish the opportunity to instigate online riots. Seems the only people able to do that legally in public are people like Imus, Howard Stern, Glenn Beck and so on. But they’re staking their jobs and reputations on being forgiven because of the entertainment value they provide. There’s more forgiveness online since you don’t even know the person. Five seconds later, you forget you even read something that got your blood pumping.

There’s an even simpler response than that: if you don’t agree with what someone is saying or they continue to rile you, simply turn off the computer.

Or if that person is me, tell me at the bottom and I’ll respond. Anonymously of course, you piece of &%@*!

Brian Miller is a writer for Sun-Times Media and a frequent blogger for In Retrospect. He owns and operates the website Naper Sports Online in the western suburbs of Chicago.

http://ow.ly/1fMfd #Lisle #monastery #sacred heart

Clarkson, however, had already mentored former USC quarterback and Heisman Trophy winner Matt Leinart and current USC quarterback Matt Barkley before working with Sills. On top of the highlight reel Kiffin was able to view and the questionable motives of Clarkson, the ethical dilemma that is permeating prep sports culture is only being amplified by the technology that allows these kids to be covered, gain recognition, and be marketed to the point of exploitation.

“For the people that don’t like kids getting recruited early, if it was their kid, what would they do? Would they hold them back?” Sills’ father said in an article by ESPN.com. “I understand people’s opinions and I respect that everybody is allowed to have an opinion but I don’t really have a problem with people young, old or in between getting recruited. I don’t think it’s a big deal. People talk about pressure and expectations but that’s not who David is. He doesn’t feel a lot of pressure. He loves football and he likes to have fun. I told him if it ever gets to a point where he’s not having fun to stop and we’ll play golf.”

While Sills and his father explained that USC was always David’s first love and that no other school would have been given a public “yes,” most of the articles reporting on the topic fail to question why Clarkson’s publicist is working to get the youngster on a variety of national talk shows or why Sill’s father is allowing his son to be exploited to this degree.

Prior to the announcement by Sills, I spoke to former NFL receiver Don Beebe, now the head coach at Aurora Christian School, a private high school in Aurora, Illinois. Beebe’s quote is quite fitting at this time though it was originally directed at marketing firm IMG, which is in discussions to hold a high school national championship despite also marketing professional athletes.

“Well, I’ll be honest with you, the exposure of the kids, I’m not a big fan of exposure,” Beebe said. “Everyone is trying to one up each other. These kids are so young, what it does is it causes a lot of pressure and it’s getting younger and younger. Then that affects the parents, and then the parents want more and want more exposure for the kids. That causes dissension amongst the team and among teammates. It puts a lot more pressure on the high school coach. And it takes away, personally, I think from what high school sports should be: the purest form of sport.”

No doubt, some kids have the moxie to deal with pressure, but others get lost in it and never get to reach their full potential. Believe it or not, four years ago, East Aurora High School junior Ryan Boatright was right where Sills is now. As a basketball prodigy on a prestigious Chicago AAU team, Boatright was also offered a scholarship by USC and then head basketball coach Tim Floyd when the 5-foot-11 point guard was in just eighth grade.

Boatright said if he had to put a percentage on how much of the decision was about marketing his name, “It would probably be about 20 percent, but when I did it, I wasn’t really thinking about (being marketed).”

Boatright, who appeared in Time magazine with a full spread and dramatically staged color photos, described what the next morning was like. “I knew I was going to have some articles, but I didn’t expect it to blow up like that,” Boatright said. “The next morning, I got home, I was on ESPN. I was on the Mike & Mike Show. That was crazy as a 14-year-old, waking up and seeing yourself on ESPN, the biggest sports station in the world. It was cool though.”

Boatright’s family kept him level-headed, but he also admitted he bought into some of the hype at first. It’s the celebrity factor that has become the norm and caused newspapers to send reporters out to high school games like paparazzi after a “Bennifer” picture.

As a prep reporter, I am grouped in with this label, but for the most part newspaper prep coverage is still an honest trade with little to no criticism. That’s not to say coaches aren’t wary of the press or worried about how things might be construed.

After a girls basketball game between Bartlett and powerhouse Geneva on Nov. 6, there were five reporters, recorders in hand, waiting to interview Geneva’s head coach Gina Nolan.

When a reporter from the Chicago Tribune broke away from the group to interview one of Nolan’s sophomore players that had transferred from Bartlett to Geneva the summer before, Nolan stopped mid-sentence and said, “I have to be there for this,” and went to stand by her player’s side.

Beebe, who saw minimal coverage during his college days at Chadron State in Nebraska, also witnessed the monstrosity that is Super Bowl media day. He explained his approach towards helping his high school players navigate the media and increased scrutiny.

“Shield them from criticism?” Beebe said when asked if he protects his players from critics. “No, I teach them how to handle it because they’re never going to get away from it. Shoot, kids these days get criticized by their peers, their coaches, their parents. I don’t see it much in media yet, as far as you writers. Very rarely do you see a writer ripping a kid for dropping a touchdown pass. Hopefully, it never gets to that, like you would in the pro ranks or talk radio talking about how bad T.O. is.”

Radio is another area that has seeped into the foundation of prep sports, though that area is far from talk radio at this point and still more coverage-based. ESPN 1000 in Chicago started their High School Game Night programming three years ago and host Ben Finfer, formerly a print journalist, described the beginning of the relationship between ESPN Radio and the Illinois High School Athletics association.

“I’m not sure who approached who first, but, for our part, we realized there was a demand out there for (coverage) and the IHSA was looking for a place for more of it,” he said. “And it was a good combination.”

High School Game Night, which airs live at various high schools on Friday nights during football season, devotes their hour-long show to speaking to coaches and reporters and running through the scores from the night plus discussing the potential impact of a team’s win or loss. But does the IHSA understand where to draw the line with their advancement of their sports?

“Every dealing we’ve had with (the IHSA), which is basically limited to planning the show and the locations of where we put the show, they’ve been great,” Finfer added. “They’ve been very helpful. I don’t know if they instruct their coaches to be helpful with media, but if they do, they’re doing a good job of it. The coaches are always very respectable and give us time. I can speak to that. I can tell you they’re good in that area. As far as figuring out their other boundaries, that’s something I’m not really qualified to say.”

While the IHSA may want the increased coverage that does not mean it’s necessarily healthy to the athletes that are integral to their existence.

“The more exposure someone gets, the more it pumps up their ego,” Beebe said. “I’m certainly not saying high school kids get this way, but some do. The more exposure they get, the more their ego gets puffed up to almost what you see at the professional level with some athletes. And these are just innocent kids. These are 15, 16, 17-year-old kids. Me personally, just let them grow up. I remember 20, 25 years ago when I was in high school that we certainly didn’t have this exposure and high school sport was just so much more innocent than it is today. Where it’s headed is it’s gonna be big business. Now hopefully the IHSA and certain states keep that limited, but you know, money talks. When you get companies like IMG that are going to do these bigger games, generating revenue, that’s only going to draw interest from a lot of people. The kids are going to get sucked right into it.”

With money being drawn into the equation, it’s no wonder people like Clarkson are marketing their pupils, but it may not always be in the best interest of the athlete.

“There’s all kind of things that are out there now for marketing a (high school) kid,” Beebe said. “There’s businesses out there that that’s what they do, solely is market the kid. I mean, it’s kind of like their agent in high school. And they do a good service for the kids to help them get scholarship money, which I think is a good thing. But there’s a catch-22 sometimes with that. There’s a lot more individualism in sport and that’s where the high school coach is so important. You have to keep preaching the principles of what team sport is all about. And there are a lot of good coaches out there doing that, thank goodness. So hopefully that continues.”

But that’s the prep level and with athletes able to jump from the prep ranks to professional with little to no college class time, athletes these days must deal with pro scouts and the bastion of college coaches who arm themselves with a cell phone, Twitter account, and questionable morals. In fact, Boatright is now open to full recruitment again since Floyd resigned from USC amidst allegations of providing improper benefits to recruits and signees.

“It makes it easier for a college coach to get a hold of you,” Boatright said about mobile technology. “Usually, you have to be at home for them to call you. Nowadays, kids are never at home. They’re always out doing something. Between your cell phone, your mom’s cell phone, it becomes a lot easier. Plus when it’s late and (the coach) doesn’t want to call the house, you can always text. It’s a good thing. I like it.”

One of the people recruiting Boatright is John Calipari at the University of Kentucky. Calipari is an infamous Twitter user, always marketing what’s going on that day with his program, but the line is very blurry between what an NCAA violation is and what is allowable.

“It’s cool,” Boatright said about Calipari using Twitter. “He’s a normal person too. He’s a coach, but he’s got a life outside of basketball also. I don’t have (Twitter) so I don’t know, but there’s no reason he shouldn’t have a Twitter (account).”

Again, what’s cool and what’s ethical is the dilemma. Technology, be that television, radio, social networking, or a variety of news and fan Web sites, is impacting our youth. Some see it as positive, some see it as negative, but the one thing is technology will never go away nor will the constantly emerging, new mediums for news discussion.

“Well, I’m sure it does have some kind of impact,” Finfer said. “I’m sure there are a lot of parents who would tell you it’s not a good thing. Some will probably tell you it’s a good thing. I can tell you, on our show, we try to stay away from being negative as much as we can. I’m sure I slip into it sometimes. Especially though when it comes to individual players, we really try to stay away from negative stuff. I’m not trying to say that other people don’t, most people are pretty good about that. I’m sure there are some message boards where things get negative and that’s bad, but besides that, I think there’s nothing wrong with Twitter and everyone posting scores. I think it’s great. It drums up more enthusiasm into the game. I don’t see why that’s bad, as long as the negative stuff isn’t getting too out of control. I don’t see a lot of negative stuff where I’m going. Most people are just cheering for their teams. So long as it stays there then it’s good and it has a very good impact.”

Regardless, the days of reading about prep sports only as a quick blurb in the weekly USA Today newspaper are over. It’s okay David, it’s not your fault. It’s LeBron’s.

• To see the full interviews and their context, please click on the Interviews page.

References

• Bowls, Polls, and Tattered Souls by Stewart Mandel

• Time magazine; September 27, 2007

• ESPNLosAngeles.com article “Sills, 13, commits to USC” by Ramona Shelburne and Shelly Smith

Mobile post sent by brianmiller using Utterli.  Replies.  mp3

While on CNBC, he discussed the new journalism model and how news aggregators are the future of journalism and pointedly said he is trying to put newspapers out of business. (See the video).

The problem with his logic is his source material. Where do you go to get well-researched or even frivolous stories without newspapers or other content driven sites? Maybe his goal is as he says, to put the newspaper out of business thereby making his business relevant. Will he, in turn, be an online newspaper? It’s possible, but by branding yourself as an aggregator and then obliterating well-thought out pieces of writing, I believe you ruin your credibility in the long run.

Michael Wolff will always be second best. What he should have done is take a page more out of Politico’s book and dominate a sector of the country’s news, in this case the politics flowing from Washington, D.C. Wolff, even did an article on them, but if the video below is any indicator, he is pretty dead set in his ways and opinions, and the belligerent, indifferent attitude will be his downfall.

The Greenslade Blog seems to be following Wolff and his obvious distaste for Rubert Murdoch and his intentions of putting things behind a pay wall. While Wolff makes good points about the obvious lack of advertising for newspapers after Craig’s List came online, he doesnt seem to realize he’s just one big fish in an ocean of big fish. As more an more entrepreneurial-based websites come online and aggregate, he’s at risk of becoming irrelevant also due to other sites having better content, more sex appeal, or, at the very least, and agreeable persona.

So, best I can tell and in my sole opinion, FLYPmedia is an 18-wheeled semi-truck. All the necessary components of storytelling are there. Not only is the overall look glossy and pleasing to the eye, but then you start to dig and end up digging the varying links to soundbites, video, or statistics to support the “article’s” theme.

The pieces cover a varying array of topics, but don’t delve into questionably arguable areas like entertainment or sports. More socially relevant topics are explored. That doesn’t mean fun ideas can’t also be explored. One of the best of those was called “The Magic Table”. I don’t deem this an entertainment story necessarily, though it was very entertaining. I believe the story focused more on the dying breed of magicians and illusionists. The story used raw video of magic tricks including usage of the camera crew and staff being used as props. It was an elegant, touching piece on a fleeting pursuit of years past.

Overall, the site covers basically everything related to the “Ten Laws of Interactive Storytelling.” For instance, FLYPmedia involves the user in feedback on blog posts and interactive stories. The entries seem more educated, thought out, and well-spoken than on most news sites. I think this is probably more indicative of the quality of the website or, at least, moderated that way.

Some of my other general observations were: the use of a newsletter for community; lack of the use of maps, but there are rollover statistics to look at and maps are likely used on other stories; the use of RSS feeds and email, but not social media; they let you know about big upcoming events and prompt stories revolving around current issues like health care debate.

Finally, and they might do this the best, but FLYPmedia seems to know the expenses they incur should only be used on comprehensive, interactive, long-standing stories. I give them two interactive thumbs up.

For the four muggings believed to be linked, the victims were men in their early 20′s alone during late night hours. In each instance, the individual was confronted from behind by four attackers also in their 20′s. They requested the men’s wallets then beat the individual in the head and face. Two of these attacks required hospitalization.

Later a suspect was identified by the man in the third attack, but the suspect was later released due to lack of evidence.

This map shows the vicinity of the attacks, the progression of two attacks that happened within minutes, and other reported attacks that could be related to confirmed correlations.