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The Tale Of Carlos Beltran's Knee And Twitter
Written by wrigleyville   
Wednesday, 13 January 2010

While I love Twitter and enjoy following baseball writers (at least those who will let me), this is a perfect example of why Tweeting as you are reporting on a fluid story may be a bad idea:

nyp_joelsherman (9:33 p.m.) Trying to get 2d confirmation, but hear that Beltran had microfracture knee surgery today without #Mets permission

Holy cats. That seems like a problem. A big one. Microfracture knee surgery is all the rage these days, but still has a recovery time of at least four months. And without permission, to boot? I'd like to hear more about Carlos Beltran and his broken knee.

(click "read more" below for the full article)

nyp_joelsherman (9:39 p.m.) 2d source is describing this as "scope clean up" for beltran. but #Mets are acting like this was more than routine

"More than routine" meaning "more serious"? I'd still like to know more.

nyp_joelsherman (9:46 p.m.) another source insists it was not microfracture surgery, but standard scope and Mets team phys Altchek and #Mets were OK on this

Well, that is very different from what was Tweeted at 9:33 p.m. Let's learn some more.

nyp_joelsherman (9:52 p.m.) Beltran had worsening osteoarthritis in rt knee and Dr. Steadman in Colo did artho cleanup today, according to #Mets

Joel Sherman's initial Tweet to his 7,514 followers used the scary words of "microfracture knee surgery" and "without Mets permission" - and was retweeted by 55 people to their thousands of followers. Yikes.

It's a tough balancing act for reporters who are constantly seeking to be first and maintain relevance in the second-to-second news cycle. But this is where it can go badly wrong (especially on things of more consequence than Carlos Beltran's knee).

If Sherman had simply waited for the second source - a staple of journalism, by the way - the misinformation about Beltran's surgery would have never made it any farther than Sherman's ears.

Updated: But wait! There's more!

At 10:15 p.m., Sherman is partially back to where he started:

nyp_joelsherman (10:15 p.m.) #Mets are definitely claiming Beltran procedure done without their blessing, and are threatening some form of action

Good grief. How about you stop Tweeting for a few minutes, put the story together, and we'll read it in the Post in the morning. Or online later tonight.

Or maybe not.



Digg! Reddit! Facebook! Technorati! StumbleUpon! BallHype: hype it up!
Comments (2)Add Comment
...
written by Bobby B, January 13, 2010
Agree completely about some of the consequences of reporting false leads... however, if he doesn't tweet what he's hearing, then I'm sure someone else with the info will and they'll get all the glory for breaking the news. It's kind of sad, but it's true.
...
written by wrigleyville, January 13, 2010
those indeed are the issues at play. that said, it's better to be right than first.

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