Katie Baker of Mediaite interviews CNBC sports business reporter Darren Rovell about his job, the stories he covers and he he gets his information.
Here is an excerpt:
Given Mediaite’s media focus, I’d love to know: what’s your routine? What do you read and where do you get your inspiration?
I used to have RSS feeds but now Twitter has destroyed those. I used to have about 200 blogs that I read off Bloglines, and since I started on Twitter I have actually not gone to that page once. Interesting!
You know, Twitter has definitely changed my reporting life. Because first of all, there’s nothing to be thrown out anymore. If you’ve got a lead on something and you can’t get anything going, or if it’s even been shot down, it still might be worth 140 characters. Nothing’s garbage anymore, that’s what I’ve learned. Though at the same time you obviously have to be really careful. I learned you have to be really careful about re-tweeting people, because people then delete your re-tweet and they credit you. So obviously you’ve got to be careful and not do anything stupid, because the CNBC name is on there. So I can’t really do anything about, you know, ‘I just ate a roast beef sandwich.’ Not like I’d want to.
CNBC has been great in terms of giving me some guidance as to what I should be doing, and also giving me freedom. The guidance is obviously: drive people back to the website. But you know, also going with my discretion as to what’s a blog and what’s not, and in some cases I would think it’s not a blog and maybe I’d make it a blog. Last night, for example, I wrote a non-sports business Tweet: “I saw Nadal’s awesome fist-pump and I said, ‘he has the best fist-pump in sports.’†And then I get fifty replies – no, it’s Tiger! No, it’s … Todd Reesing! The quarterback from Kansas! I mean it’s like, what? And then people sent the link and I was like wow, that is good! I never really paid attention to it. So, as journalists, most of us have learned it’s not a one way street, it’s a dialogue with people. The more that dialogue can come out, the better.
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