Real-time updates, instant analysis and interaction with sports fans as the game is played – social media has completely changed the landscape of how sports are covered and written about. Pete Cataldo, account executive at Affect Strategies, shares his insights from a Social Media Week panel of five well-known sports journalists on how their roles have evolved … and what it means from a PR standpoint. Read the full post on the Johnson King blog!

As I watched the interview at home on Monday night, I realized I wasn’t emotionally invested in McGwire’s story. I’m a huge sports fan, it’s true. But I didn’t grow up with baseball and definitely was not paying attention to it during the “magical” season of 1998.

Instead, my first thought was: who are the puppet masters pulling the strings behind this elaborate PR maneuver? Who made the decision that the best way to reintroduce McGwire to the media — who have been anxiously anticipating a follow-up to his awkward 2005 Congressional testimony — was 60 minutes of no-holds-barred, live questioning by Bob Costas? I don’t have immediate sources to back up this claim, but my gut tells me that other athletes in McGwire’s situation have typically issued terse, written statements and laid low. Check this list and let me know if I’m mistaken.

Here are my PR takeaways from Monday night’s interview.

The Medium is the Message
The performative aspect of McGwire’s interview can’t be overstated. The sheer act of sitting in the chair, in makeup, under the lights, for the longest, most serious interview I’ve seen on TV in ages, inherently played in McGwire’s favor: it humanized him. After a few rounds of repetitive questioning, and repetitive answering, I found myself zoning out and just thinking, poor guy and don’t worry, it’ll be over soon. And even as the sports writers (who I’ll get to momentarily) chastised him for not being contrite enough, they did give him credit for “manning up” and volunteering to speak on the record. Again, that choice puts him in stark contrast to the dozens of other silent accused steroid users.

Sports Writers Have Serious Issues
There were shades of Oprah’s public shaming of James Frey in the way the MLB Network commentators responded to McGwire’s remarks. In this case, the “million little pieces” that shattered weren’t Oprah’s book club machine but the sports writers who made a living spinning yarns about the magical 1998 baseball season, in which McGwire and Sosa competed to overtake the home run record. Just as Oprah “made” James Frey by promoting his book in her club, Tom Verducci et. al. give the impression that they somehow “made” McGwire with such effusive media coverage. And, like Oprah, they somehow felt the need to publicly shame their former hero so the taint didn’t rub onto their sportscoats.

If you read the book A Million Little Pieces and enjoyed it, does knowing it might not be 100% true retroactively erase the pleasure you experienced reading it? If you were a baseball fan who loved every minute of the 1998 home run chase, does knowing Mark McGwire was one of many players who used performance enhancing drugs during that season spoil the fun you had then? Guess what? IT CAN’T. Unless you found a hole in the time-space continuum, the fun you had was the fun you had.

It shocks me that more people don’t see the underlying ninja PR-move at play, on the part of the journalists who somehow are able to make us believe that they are victims, and, in the case of McGwire, chastise him for not reading off of their pre-approved contrition script. (Though McGwire admitted to using steroids, he didn’t “admit” that they directly, positively affected his performance, i.e., his record breaking home run season.) Wow. As I said in my tweet, I never thought I’d agree with Harold Reynolds but was relieved when he gave Verducci and Rosenthal a reality check in his post-interview remarks.

Exclusives Can be Pulled Off
Apparently Bob Costas was approached as early as January 6th to conduct the interview, though he didn’t know when or where it would take place. And though the media had been anticipating a McGwire interview — Costas himself had been chasing him since February 2009 — it appears that, until his statement was published on the Cardinals website around 3pm Eastern on Monday, the story hadn’t leaked. Kudos to Bartow and his team, led by former Bush press secretary-turned-sports PR flack Ari Fleischer for pulling off that feat.

We All Deserve a Boss Like Tony LaRussa
He hired McGwire as the Cardinals’ new hitting coach knowing that in itself would cause a PR stir — whether McGwire decided to “come clean” or not. And not only did he stay out of the preparation for Monday’s events (“I had a heads-up it was coming, but I didn’t know what he was going to say,” La Russa said Tuesday), he took tons of interviews to stump for McGwire immediately afterward. Here’s one. That says a lot about LaRussa as a person, and a manager.

There are No Fairytale Endings
The one writer whose opinion I actively sought out on this topic was Will Leitch, former editor of Deadspin, current contributor to New York Magazine and, perhaps most importantly, die-hard Cardinals fan. Check out his recent McGwire post on NYMag.com’s The Sports Section, which concludes with this thought:

There will always be something wrong with any statement McGwire or the rest of them make. We’re mad because we feel duped. Who cares that PEDs weren’t banned by baseball when McGwire played? Who cares that he looks like a truly penitent, haunted man? He messed with America’s memories, and he can’t put a nice ending on it now. Sorry, Mark; sorry, Barry; sorry, Rocket: Your crime is not taking steroids, your crime is taking steroids too late in your careers to make up for it on the field before you retired.

He’s right. There is no antidote for “messing with America’s memories;” there was never going to be a perfect outcome to please all those invested in the story. But, in my opinion, the past week’s events have been a net positive for McGwire, the Cardinals, and their PR team — and a net negative for sports journalists who, unlike Leitch, can’t tell where their feelings end and McGwire’s contrition begins.

By the way, Oprah eventually apologized to Frey. Anyone ready to man up yet?