Courtesy New York Times

(August 5, 2009) Soon after ESPN issued 12 guidelines to its employees about social networking on Tuesday, Ric Bucher, one of its N.B.A. writers and analysts, wrote on Twitter, “The hammer just came down, tweeps: ESPN memo prohibiting tweeting info unless it serves ESPN.”

He then added, “My guess is I can still tweet about my vacation/car shopping, etc.”

The guidelines are more detailed than Bucher described them. But they restrict the freedom that ESPN employees might previously have enjoyed.

“We’ve been in the social networking space for a long time, and will continue to be there,” said Chris LaPlaca, an ESPN spokesman. “But we want to be smarter about how we do it.” He said that Bucher’s “interpretation of the policy is mistaken.”

The guidelines say that on-air talent, reporters and writers are prohibited from having sports-related blogs or Web sites and that they will need a supervisor’s approval to discuss sports on any social networking sites. They will also be restricted from discussing internal policies or detailing how stories are “reported, written, edited or produced.”

The guide that Bucher focused on reads, “The first and only priority is to serve ESPN-sanctioned efforts, including sports news, information and content.” Violating the new guidelines could lead to suspension or dismissal.

ESPN will soon deploy modules to simultaneously link ESPN employees’ tweets and other social networking feeds to various ESPN’s Web sites. “The key phrase is write it once, publish it everywhere,” LaPlaca said. He said the policy is “not meant to diminish our having conversations with fans, but to do them so that if you’re not on Facebook, you can still get the information.”

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