No Harm, No Foul

Professional athletes are often scrutinized in the media for commenting on current events, breaking news headlines, and pop culture. Their opinions are ones average, everyday citizens may have in common yet their public persona tends to generate controversy in the media more often. Why do we place Olympic and professional athletes on a pedestal of perfection only to ridicule them publicly when they make statements we may or may not agree with in social media? The cliché, "to whom much is given, much is required" is the answer to this perplexing question.

Pro athletes do not have lives like you and I. They are making millions of dollars playing a sport that several of us look up to and admire. They are being paid based on their athletic ability, public appearances, and interviews. The league they work for and their endorsers expect them to be professional at all times, which is even a requirement of those employed in the corporate world. The main difference is these athletes are constantly in the public eye, making it easier for a slip of the tongue to offend non-profit organizations and industries worldwide. With one wrong tweet or status update, professional athletes can lose contracts and endorsements with companies like Reebok, Adidas, Nike, or Gatorade.

Lolo Jones is a perfect example of an Olympic athlete who often gets carried away with social media. She is an Olympic athlete who manages to stir up controversy in the public eye and is often scrutinized for her Twitter commentary rather than praised for her athletic accomplishments. Where shall I begin? Let's start with her Twitter remark she made in October of 2012 when she challenged another athlete to a race waging a light hearted bet of $40,000. Her challenging wager was like the notorious line from the film The Godfather: "I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse", leaving fans questioning who the real Lolo Jones is.

 

To add fuel to the fire, her 'Las Vegas style' betting skills were not only the focus of controversy. What was astonishing was she challenged Eric LeGrand to a race, who is now confined to a wheelchair. Eric LeGrand, a retired football player, suffered a spinal cord injury in a Rutgers versus Navy game which paralyzed him in 2010. LeGrand tweeted Jones in a playful manner asking Jones to race him, which to Jones' defense she quickly responded without knowing the football player's incredible story of recovery. Jones tweeted in reply, "Get checked for a concussion. Clearly, u've been hit in the head... cos u arn't beating a track athlete." Fans became outraged at her seemingly insensitive tweet and also responded with disdain. Ryan Hudson of SB Nation hissed, "There's no reason to get too upset, because it was a lowest common denominator joke, made by a lowest common denominator person."

As an Olympic athlete, surely she should have known of LeGrand's injury since he was featured in Sports Illustrated Magazine and was honored at the Espy awards. However, Jones publicly made a mistake we all could have made in a moment of passion that potentially derailed her career or at least made people highly dislike her. Then there is the recent controversy with Jones' Twitter response to Rachel Jeantel's testimony in the Trayvon Martin trial. 8 months later after making headlines for abruptly commenting on Twitter, she repeats offensive remarks without any regard to the Martin family. Making more lighthearted banter Jones blurts out, "Rachel Jeantel looked so irritated during the cross-examination that I burned it on DVD and I'm going to sell it as Madea goes to court."

As playful as her tweet may have been it did not go over well with her 300 thousand followers who struck back calling her "classless" and "privileged". The troubling fact is that she is still determined to tweet at leisure without taking responsibility for her actions. How an Olympian can go from the most adored to the most hated merely from a few tweets is mind boggling to me.

 
Jones was an Olympic hopeful to medal in the 2012 London Olympic Games although she fell short placing 4th in the 100m hurdles. Her inspiration to return to the 2016 Olympics in Rio de Janeiro is a story that should outshine any negative one in the news. Despite her infectious smile and jovial personality, she manages to become the center of negative attention that overshadows her talent. Social media may be to blame for her troubles, although Jones has contributed to destroying her image by posting daily updates on Twitter and Facebook.

Her recent alleged bar brawl has made her the subject of an FBI investigation that can be attributed to her recklessness and previous history of backlash in the news. Through all of the turmoil, hateful messages, disgruntled remarks and police reports Lolo Jones manages to do what we all continue to do in order to keep up with trending conversation. She tweets to her followers in 140 characters or less: "I don't have a 'Hater's list'. I have a forgiveness one." To Lolo Jones' defense, indeed forgiveness is a great list to have.


  

Ride the Social Media Wave

 

 

 

Marketing a product through social media is the easiest way to increase revenue in 2013. Before social media was introduced, bookstores made a huge profit from customers purchasing paperback and hardcover books over the counter. Before 2011 bookstores generated a substantial profit; however statistics have shown a decline in sales due to new innovations such as Kindle, iBooks and even free library resources online that make purchasing a book quick and easy. Bookstore sales have plummeted 9.6% since 2007 causing companies like Borders to go out of business. Barnes & Noble and Half Price Books have managed to keep above water mainly due to both companies’ loyal customers. With Barnes & Noble merging with Starbucks, they are able to bring in customers who are willing to come into the cafe and drink a beverage while reading their favorite novel.

For individuals like me who love to purchase books through iBooks, downloading is the fastest way to avoid standing in lines and worrying about receipts. The best part of purchasing an e-book is the ease of highlighting and bookmarking directly on an iPad. Keeping up with your favorite author either on Facebook or Twitter is easily accessible as well. I was interested to see how many authors advertise and market themselves on Twitter and examined a list from the NewYork Times best booksellers of 2013. The top 5 booksellers of 2013 were: Inferno, by Dan Brown; Second Honeymoon, by James Patterson; This Man Confessed, by Jodi Ellen Malpas;And The Mountains Echoed, by Khaled Hosseini; and Affliction, by Laurell K. Hamilton. The list was comprised of sales from printed and e-book sales combined.

I was so intrigued by the top selling 5 fiction authors, several of them renowned, that I searched for their Twitter handles to examine how much marketing is left up to their social media sites. Out of the 5 authors, 100% of them market and advertise their products on Twitter. Dan Brown's Twitter is @AuthorDanBrown while James Patterson is a little more difficult to find @JP_Books. Interacting with Twitter followers is the most successful way authors make a profit from book sales, which James Patterson has done an excellent job at connecting with followers. He has 37,500 followers and even has a photo of himself and NBA star Grant Hill at an event benefiting children. The more followers he can interact with on Twitter, the more viewers will see his book advertised and will more likely purchase his book via e-book.

This type of marketing is brilliant and more profitable than ever before. In fact, we all should be moving toward writing and publishing books with the intent to market via social media. The fastest way to get rich has moved from bookstore purchasing to the online social media frenzy.

A Moment of Silence…

 

A ‘not guilty’ verdict and a gloating smile. This was the final glimpse of George Zimmerman before he walked out of the courtroom a free man. After one month, 6 jurors decided that there was not enough evidence to prove the defendant was guilty of second degree murder. In Florida, the Stand Your Ground Law law allows a person to justifiably use force in self-defense when there is reasonable belief of an unlawful threat without an obligation to retreat first. When the story first hit headlines in February 2012, the media sensationalized every component of the news involving the fatal shooting of Trayvon Martin. Race and gender played immense roles in the opening of the trial and remained a defining issue at the conclusion of the trial. In a poll taken at the beginning of the case, 91% of African Americans saw the shooting as unjustified whereas only 59% of Hispanics and 35% of whites believed it was unjustified. Heated debates on Facebook and Twitter incited passion and anger from parents of children who believed their son(s) could have been a target of violence in the same manner as the 17 year old victim.

Even the President of the U.S. publicly stated, “I can only imagine what these parents are going through, and when I think about this boy, I think about my own kids.” In response to the President’s statement, I agree that we should all think about kids who are gunned down in our communities and remote communities as our own kids, regardless of race. Upon first hearing of the incident and the 911 calls I was outraged. I almost felt the incident was as surreal as a fictional character in a novel written by Walter Dean Myers. The elements of the story seemed fabricated, surely there had to have been more than iced tea and skittles in Trayvon Martin’s hand?

A harsh reality is several people who questioned the motives of the slain victim felt there was a justifiable reason that led to his death. His hoodie, his skin color, his prior aggressive behavior in school led to a widespread belief among supporters of Zimmerman that Martin was guilty before the trial had even taken place. Trayvon was portrayed by a portion of the media as a weed smoking hoodlum who towered over Zimmerman by 2 feet. By other sectors of the media, he was portrayed as a black kid who went skiing, loved to horseback ride, and enjoyed participating in fun activities. Zimmerman was also portrayed by the media in two different roles, one role as the innocent neighborhood watch guard and the other as an abusive white/Hispanic male with a prior criminal record of assault.

The media added fuel to the fire, leaving out pieces of the case which kept building over time as evidence unraveled on both sides of the defense and prosecuting teams. The “media hype” is a familiar one often seen in criminal cases making national headlines. We are all stirred by controversy because it evokes emotion that hits our hearts to the core. Whether you were in favor of either individual you were involved and immersed in the trial.

To know there was under-representation of minorities on the jury and on the team of attorneys, I feel the trial was a slap in the face to all concerned with providing Trayvon Martin a fair trial. Hearing defense attorney, Don West recite knock-knock jokes was especially insulting and disrespectful to the family of the deceased. West stated after the trial, “Myknock knock joke was still funny.” How is the death of any human being funny? The trial wasn’t a press conference for an election neither was it a political arena for jokes, yet Don West was arrogantly slapping supporters of Martin in the face with his pride. In reviewing the jury selection, interestingly women were over-represented on the jury and men were under-represented. 6 jurors instead of 12 were selected which seemed skewed and unconstitutional for a criminal case, in my opinion.

The breakdown of selected jurors (which they were labeled more like lottery numbers or the electronic game battleship) was presented and televised: E6, E40, B 37, B51, B29, and B76. Juror E6 was a female who heard minimal news about the case but stated the media always fails to provide factual news. By her statement alone she should have been eliminated from the jury based on biased opinions toward the media and her awareness of the trial via news. Her view seemed to have already been swayed before she entered the courtroom, yet she was chosen. There were three other males who could have been selected as jurors to add diversity to the jury although they were also omitted from the selection process. One was African American, one Hispanic, and the other was Caucasian. Neither man was selected, which raises several eyebrows about the justice system in Florida. How do you symbolically annihilate an entire race and gender of individuals who should be represented in the courtroom for due process to occur?

The manipulated court process in Florida proves time after time that minorities, especially minority men are being tried unfairly in front of judges and juries without fair representation and without lawful consistency. The final thought provoking question that is something to consider is what can we learn from the trial as a whole to unite everyone rather than divide? Do we ignore race as a thing of the past or confront underline issues within the state of Florida and other states? Do we pray as a nation for change? One thing for sure is if we continue to be spectators of laws rather than take action and work to change the laws, the individuals who lose their lives either to imprisonment or are unjustly killed will suffer along with their families.