“The common and continual mischiefs of the spirit of party are sufficient to make it the interest and duty of a wise people to discourage and restrain it. It agitates the Community with ill-founded jealousies and false alarms; kindles the animosity of one part against another, foments occasionally riot and insurrection. It opens the door to foreign influence and corruption, which find a facilitated access to the government itself through the channels of party passions.”

As our Founding Father left office, Thomas Jefferson was organizing the Democratic-Republican Party to counter Alexander Hamilton’s Federalist Party. One party backed Great Britain; the other supported France. That’s perhaps what worried Washington most, but his warning holds merit 214 years later.

Our country is more partisan than at any point in my life. Lawmakers on both sides of the political aisle shout down good ideas because in this political climate, the only thing more important than being heard is getting credit.

Perhaps one day we can work together, United once again.

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Once again, women across the country have led a successful viral marketing campaign to raise awareness about breast cancer.

Newspapers turned their first October editions pink.  Football players wore pink gloves, cleats and chin guards. And many have already “raced for a cure” in 5K events across the country. But nothing has people talking as much as the viral marketing campaign on Facebook.

The idea is women post where they like to to put their purses. Red-blooded guys like me see the update and comment, sparking millions of conversations across the world that ultimately lead to breast cancer awareness.

But not everyone’s a fan.

Some have criticized the campaign as juvenile, including Forbes writer Meghan Casserly who wrote, “I may be the biggest cynic in the free female world, but it’s a marketing charade I just can’t get behind.

“It seems to me, that, especially when it comes to bra colors, or where you “like it,” the impact on the actual fight against actual breast cancer is actually nill.”

I don’t have any stats on how much giving rose — if any — over the past few days due to this promotion. That’s part of the point Casserly makes, but she misses the bigger picture.

On Oct. 5, the “I Like” campaign garnered four of the top 20 most searched items on Google. As of this writing, there are 1,278 articles online about the campaign, including stories from the Wall Street Journal, Time Magazine, CBS News, and of course Ms. Casserly’s piece on Forbes Magazine.

Millions of people read these stories all across the country, and thousands more share them with friends.  For example, the story by the New York Daily News has been shared on Facebook more than 3,600 times.

Media exposure like this is worth millions.

Well done ladies. Well done.

How to help the fight

If you’d like to donate money to help in the fight against cancer, you can do so here:

Jimmy V Foundation.

To make sure your donation goes to breast cancer research, select the Kay Yow Foundation in the drop-down menu.

Props to Tessa Burnett. I tweaked her clever Facebook status to come up with the title for this post.

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Divisional Series

Rays over Rangers
Tampa Bay’s pitching staff will be too much for Texas to overcome, even in a short series. I expect the Rays to close this one out in four games.

Yankees over Twins
Minnesota’s Justin Morneau has been ruled out for the entire playoffs. He’s been gone since mid-July and the Twins have done well in his absence, but I don’t think they match up well with the firepower in the middle of the Yankee lineup. I expect the Yankees to sweep.

Phillies over Reds
What a magical season for Dusty Baker and the Cincinnati Reds. That magic ends after a short stay in the postseason, however. The Phillies just have too many good arms to lose to the Reds. They coast into the NLCS with a three-game sweep.

Giants over Braves
Bobby Cox has been the best manager of my generation, maybe of any generation.  It’s hard to imagine he’s been at the helm since 1990, and it’s even harder to believe some of the teams he’s somehow guided to the playoffs. It’s no surprise he did it again with this injury-depleted Braves squad. No Chipper, no Prado, and the Braves still made it. The talent just isn’t there to advance though. I expect errors to cost the Braves severely as they lose in four games to the Giants.

The rest of my playoff picks after the jump:

Championship Series

Rays over Yankees
You’d be hard pressed to find a MLB executive who would rather have the Rays in the World Series instead of the Yankees… the team has the worst fans in baseball and can’t even sell out in the thick of a pennant race. But this could be the last chance for the Rays. Ownership will cut payroll after the season. I think David Price wins two – if not three – games in this one, and earns ALCS MVP as the Rays nip the Yankees in a thrilling seven-game series.

Phillies over Giants
As exciting as the ALCS could be, the NLCS could be wrapped up in just four games. The Phillies are too talented… with Halladay, Oswalt, and Hamels, not to mention a loaded offense. Lincecum is an amazing pitcher, but I think he might struggle in the bright lights of the NLCS. It’s old hat for Philly. They win in five.

World Series

Rays over Phillies
I expect Philadelphia to have all the advantages in this one – home field and more rest by way of an easier Championship round opponent. I think they jump out to a 2-0 lead, but the Rays will roar back and win the last four in a row, beating the Phillies in six games to win the Rays’ first World Series.

Then, maybe, just maybe they’ll move to a city that cares about baseball.

MVP – Carl Crawford (who will be playing in Boston next season)

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Newspapers used to be great PR advertising machines for sports teams.  It wasn’t unusual for a big city paper to have a sports reporter per team, whose sole job was to find and write stories about that team.  Think of all the free publicity that creates.  But now newspapers are cutting costs, laying off staff and sharing stories across newspapers.  The Raleigh News & Observer and the Charlotte Observer used to write up separate stories about games — now they share stories based on geography.

Sports teams, sports leagues, and Web sites that recognized this shift early are capitalizing on it, and it’s paying dividends.  I just want to take a minute to look at a few of those early adopters who have helped turn sports journalism on its head and are leading the evolution of sports journalism as we enter a new decade:

Adam Lucas, right, interviewing UNC baseball coach Mike Fox

Adam Lucas joined TarHeelBlue.com in March of 2001 as an embedded reporter.  It was the first hire of its kind at a university, and eight years later most of us in the Tar Heel fan base are still thankful for UNC’s foresight.  Now more schools are following UNC’s lead, offering more than just game recaps by SIDs.  It’s both a positive trend and a potentially alarming one.  Adam’s articles are must-reads for me following a game.  They are a great change of pace from news-ed pieces, written for Tar Heel fans by an objective Tar Heel grad who has the ear of a fan base.

This is the future of sports journalism for many teams.  For example, every single MLB team has a beat writer for that team’s web site and other sports leagues are following suit.  As long as there are still independent journalists writing about teams to offer an unfiltered opinion, I’m all for embedded reporters.  Adam has proven over these past eight years that he has access to insider stories newspaper and TV reporters aren’t privy to.

Shaquille O’Neal and Chad Ochocinco have embraced Twitter in a way that enables them to reach out to fans directly.  For athletes, their names are their brand.  What do you think of first when I say, “Tiger Woods?”  How has that answer changed over the past month?  Tiger hurt his own image, which essentially is his brand name and that’s cost him advertising revenue.  Shaq and Chad Johnson realize Twitter offers them the ability to shape their own image without having to rely on sports reporters or the World Wide Leader.

Jason Peck wrote last December that Shaq had 21,000 followers at the time.  In one year, that number doubled… and doubled again… and doubled again.  Shaq now has more than 2.6 million followers, 12 times what he had last December.  Chad Johnson has more than 500,000 followers and launched his own iPhone app that at one point was one of the top two highest selling sports apps on the iPhone.  He even broke the news when the Bengals’ first-round draft pick signed with the team.  Sports journalism is evolving on the social media front because athletes realize they don’t need journalists.  They are often eliminating the middle man and reaching out directly to fans.  This will only continue to grow in the next decade.

ESPN is hoping to change local sports reporting in much the same way that it changed national sports reporting.  The WWL has started to roll out localized versions of ESPN.com in Chicago, Boston, Dallas and other cities.  In many cases, ESPN is hiring the same sports reporters in those areas who used to cover teams for the local newspapers.  It’s a big venture, one they are pushing hard on network programming like SportsCenter and live games.  The smart thing ESPN is doing, is they are going after both national and local advertisers.  On ESPNChicago.com you might see an ad for StubHub right next to an ad for a local jewelry store.  ESPN can also reuse stories and video already being published on ESPN.com in a way that newspapers can’t.  It’s Chicago site, which launched in the spring, has already surpassed the Tribune and Sun-Times in terms of traffic.  Expect similar results in the other cities over time.

MLB has pioneered the Internet and social media in ways other leagues still haven’t.  NFL dominated TV.  The NBA has dominated worldwide expansion and player marketability.  MLB is dominating the newest frontier.  The NFL is still king of the sports world, but their efforts pale in comparison to what MLB is doing on the Web.  MLB has beat reporters for each team, localized all of its content onto one site, created MLBlogs.com so fans can add free content of their own, and was the first to make games available online.  It even launched the best sports iPhone app I’ve ever seen, which lets you watch live games on your phone — from pretty much anywhere.  There’s so much MLB is doing right on the Web, you almost wish the guys making those decisions were running other areas of the league

Are there sports journalism pioneers you think deserve to be mentioned?  Tell me who belongs on this list and what they’re doing in the evolution of sports journalism.

Related posts:

1. 2010 MLB Playoff Predictions
2. Athletes joining Twitter in record numbers
3. “Balloon Boy” story shows power of social media

The headline is pretty gripping (even though it turned out the boy wasn’t inside.)  There are some breaking news situations that spread like wildfire through social media sites… Miracle on the Hudson, Michael Jackson’s death and what’s became known as “Balloon Boy.”

How did you hear the news?  Facebook?  Twitter?  A news alert emailed to your inbox?  We are now able to find out breaking news mere moments after it happens.  When something goes viral across all media — including social media — you know about it very quickly.

I found out about the story from a friend on Facebook.  That friend posted a link to CNN.com.  I clicked there and went to CNN’s live coverage online, watching the balloon speed over Colorado’s plains.

I logged onto Twitter, where “Balloon Boy” or a reference to the balloon took up seven of the 10 top trending spots.  Entertainment bloggers, sports bloggers, technology bloggers… everyone was talking about this kid.  The compelling video and pictures captivated everyone.  Many passed along the crazy story; many more prayed for the safety of the child believed to be on board.

I texted and called a few friends to tell them to turn on the television, and I turned the TV on myself as the balloon started to land.  Had I been on the go, I could have simply watched the balloon touch down from live video on my iPhone.  In the span of a few short hours, I used nearly every medium available to me to find more on this story or pass along the news.

Friends replace common news sources

TV stations, newspapers and the traditional media are no longer the primary source for my breaking news; my friends fill that role.  Think about how many people on Twitter and Facebook first heard about the news from friends and then retweeted or forwarded that news along to many more other friends.  My friends broke the news and then I turned to traditional news stations to find out more about the story as it happened.

Once I turned CNN on, the purpose of social media morphed from news breaker to conversation setter.  It gives everyone an avenue to express their thoughts, their concerns and join a larger conversation about the captivating event.  I was talking to a friend on the phone about the story while tweeting and reading my friends’ responses.

As far as journalism goes, this is the real power of social media.  It’s part of the reason why CNN was so smart to add iReporter functions to its iPhone app.  CNN can’t be everywhere at once, but its millions of viewers can be.  A smart reporter can also use things like Twitter to quickly alert followers to breaking news that they typically will hear about first through wires or phone calls from the newsroom.  The Twitter retweet can be a great tool to show that you’re on top of a story or many times that you are the first one to break a story.  Only the journalists themselves actually care if the dateline on their website beats the dateline on another website’s homepage.

Think about this: Viewers are more apt to remember who they heard the story from first as opposed to who reported it first.

Related posts:

1. CNN integrates social media into iPhone app
2. Athletes joining Twitter in record numbers
3. Evolution of sports journalism

I saw Al Horford joined Twitter recently.  He’s @Al_Horford, started tweeting Oct. 4 and three days later already has 880 followers.  I love how more and more athletes are using Twitter and Facebook to connect directly with fans.  It takes the middlemen — PR directors and the media — out of the equation and often gives you an unfiltered look at the men and women behind the jerseys you pull so hard for.

Most people know Al Horford as one of the leaders of the Florida Gators’ back-to-back national championship run.  Horford was then selected with the third overall pick in the 2007 NBA Draft by the Atlanta Hawks.  He had a great rookie campaign but Kevin Durant narrowly beat him out for Rookie of the Year honors.

In some of his first tweets, Horford roots for his hometown Detroit Tigers as they take on the Minnesota Twins with a spot in the playoffs on the line.  Horford went to high school in Grand Ledge, Michigan, before heading south to Gainesville for college.

I follow a handful of athletes on Twitter, including the ever-popular Shaquille O’Neal, who will occasionally tell his tweeps where he’s at so they can say hello if they’re nearby.  While I wouldn’t advise this for someone like… supermodel Brooklyn Decker… I don’t suppose anyone will tug on that Superman’s cape.  But the fact is — social media applications are giving fans unbridled access to some of the world’s biggest stars.

Chad Johnson frequently tweets back and forth with fans and Ustreams live shows.  After one of OchoCinco’s preseason games, he logged onto Ustream and held a live show from the team’s plane.  It was pretty neat to see Chad interact with Bengals fans while munching on a cheeseburger, and it was funny when the plane ran out of cheeseburgers… worrying Chad that he might have to settle for a chicken sandwich instead.  Luckily a teammate came to the rescue and gave Chad his burger.  Crisis averted.  I never disliked Chad Johnson, but thanks to Twitter and Ustream, you can now count me among his 215,000-plus fans.

But anyway, all this brings me back to Horford.  I love messing around on Photoshop and felt like creating the Hawks star a background since he just has the generic Twitter background right now.  What do you guys think?

Related posts:

1. Evolution of sports journalism

PCWorld writes, “CNN’s new iPhone app puts rivals to shame.“  Wired adds that the new app is “informative and empowering.”

But then again, NPR has a terrific news app of its own, so what makes the new CNN iphone app so special?  Social media.  The World News Leader now offers it’s legion of iReporters a way to quickly and simply share pictures and videos remotely.

Let’s pretend another incident like the Miracle on the Hudson happens.  People who saw the crash right when it happened posted pictures on Twitter and one Twitpic image went viral.  Now those same people can send CNN images directly and CNN can turn that around quickly, adding it to CNN.com almost instantaneously and airing it on TV a short time later.

It gives CNN an army of reporters and makes it the go-to source for breaking news.

All this can be yours… for a price

There’s also something else that separates CNN’s new app from the competition — a price tag.  While the NY Times, NPR, USA Today and many more offer free news apps, CNN’s app costs $1.99.  That fact wasn’t lost on the Associated Press.  It too has a free news app but tried charging $2.99 for a Blackberry app earlier this year.  An AP story reported that the “download rate was less than a tenth of what the app usually attracts.”

There’s no question that some people will look at the new CNN app, see a price tag and decide it’s not for them.  But if CNN is able to monetize this app — and I think they will — we could see a change in the way other news agencies offer apps.  NY Times, you’re on the clock…

What’s the fuss all about

In case you are wondering, why can’t  I just go to CNN.com in my normal iPhone browser to get this stuff, the answer is because it’s not there.  That’s the biggest difference between CNN and other news apps.  I can get practically everything from the NY Times app just by going to the NY Times’ mobile website.  Why should I clutter my iPhone desktop?  CNN went the extra mile to add live video, flick-story viewing and the ability to save posts to read later.

For the curious among us, here are the rest of the features available in the CNN iphone app according to CNN.com:

• Read all the latest news most important to you. Easy to navigate by flicking or scrolling through stories and news objects just like album artwork on your iPod. Easy to consume with both snack-size highlights and full stories. Easy to share via Facebook, Twitter and SMS.
• Watch live breaking news and on-demand video clips across all news categories
• Save text and video stories to dive into later – and even save text for viewing without a connection (on flights, etc.)
• Follow topics most important to you, and receive alerts when developments in those areas are published
• iReport directly from the App! For all you iReporters, the CNN App provides a direct gateway to iReport.com allowing you to browse content or instantly upload your photos and videos (if you have the iPhone 3GS)

Related posts:

1. “Balloon Boy” story shows power of social media

I got a phone call early Tuesday morning at 2 a.m.  It was my mom and she was crying.

“Your uncle Mark passed away,” she said.

My uncle died Monday night, the youngest of five children.  He leaves behind three kids – ages 15, 16, and 17.

The resiliency of families during troubled times is amazing.  Minor — and even major disagreements — between family members are pushed aside if only temporarily.  The family forms a sort of cocoon around those family members hurting most.

I know my job during times like these and that’s to be here for my mom.  She’s the one the family turns to, the one everyone else leans on, so I have to make sure that weight’s not too great.

My mom is the one who had to tell Mark’s children that their father passed away.  My mom is the one who had to comfort my grandmother when she learned her youngest child died.

It’s an awful burden and a great responsibility at the same time to be the rock of the family.  I admire my mom, I miss Mark and I love my family.

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