For SEC, tech-savvy fans might be biggest threats to media exclusivity

Dade City judge and University of Florida grad Pat Siracusa is such a big Gators football fan that he sometimes wears a replica Tim Tebow jersey under his black robe on Fridays in the fall.

His profile picture on his Facebook page is a photo he took with his phone from the stands at last January’s national championship game.

It’s a good memory.

But the Southeastern Conference might use a different word to describe that image: illegal.

The SEC, one of college sports’ biggest, richest, most prominent conferences, earlier this month sent to its 12 schools an eye-opening new media policy. It places increasingly stringent limits on reporters and how much audio, video and “real-time” blogging they can do at games, practices and news conferences.

But even more interesting is that the policy also includes rules for fans in the stands. No updating Twitter feeds. No taking photos with phones and posting them on Facebook or Flickr. No taking videos and putting them on YouTube.

Source: St. Petersburg Times

See also: Social Media Banned From College Stadiums (Mashable)

Note: ResourceShelf senior editor Shirl Kennedy is a news researcher for the St. Petersburg Times.

This entry was posted on Monday, August 17th, 2009 and is filed under Access to Information, Censorship, Search News, Social Media, Technology and Internet, Web 2.0. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.