Swimming Blogs - Garrett McCaffrey

A lot of people go to school for 6 years. Most of them work in a hospital, court room, or laboratory. I, on the other hand, spent an extra 2 years in school earning a journalism degree. It wasn't the most direct route to graduation, but I did end up with the best broadcast journalism degree in the country from The University of Missouri. Yet it wasn't until I was out in the real world starting a swimming website that I realized the truth in something I was taught during broadcast 1: You don't need a license to be a journalist.

Being a journalist is no different than being a swim coach in that way. You don't have to take an oath or pass a test, and even the greats like Murrow and Counsilman were never sworn into their positions. Their legacies were built based on the product they created.

On the journalistic side, we have entered a new era of media. Many reporters are panicking as they're scooped by a type of journalist that reports outside the "established" media via this new scary medium called the internet. Despite the fact that I put in the time to earn that journalism degree, I don't see this new medium as scary at all.

I see it as beam of hope for sports like ours that have been ignored by the more traditional forms of journalism. With news becoming more and more specialized we can finally get the intelligent in depth exposure that we've seen the major sports receive for years. We're seeing it now in the increased number of meet coverages taking place throughout swimming. And the sky is really the limit with sites like this offering the opportunity for anyone to cover the sport. Whether you want to gain experience writing, interviewing, doing play by play, working with photos/video or you simply want your local club team to get some recognition, the option is available. It's a great thing for the growth of our sport. But I also understand how it can be a scary new era for some people.

This new era demands quality, and it holds you accountable for it. For example, if you're a coach and a lot of people throughout the community have issues with you, including your swimmers, it's becoming harder to hide. In most cases the truth will come out and you can blame the interviewer, demand the interview be taken down or even have the swimmer call and ask to have the interview taken down, but the truth will eventually show itself in this new era. Or if you're an established media outlet with a strong tradition in the community I can see how you'd be scared of sharing the market with all these new players. You can try to put blocks in their way by gossiping and criticizing the new methods, but if you can't put out a better product your reputation won't mean anything. This new era demands quality, and it holds you accountable for it. But that's no reason to fight it.

Its economics 101. Competition breeds quality in the market. Quality in the market in turn creates a bigger stronger market. With all these outlets now focusing exclusively on the sport of swimming doesn't it benefit everyone if the market is bigger and stronger? It's the same challenge that coaches and swimmers face as they try to keep up with the drastic time improvements throughout the swimming world. So why are so many organizations within our sport so frightened of competition?

I have run into all kinds of road blocks and barriers while trying to bring the best swimming coverage to the community. The most common? Exclusivity.

This weekend, after a couple outlets tried to stop us from broadcasting live at juniors, I could have requested exclusive rights to the event next year. But all I asked for was the chance to cover the meet again next year. I have been shut out of too many meets to ever see exclusivity as a good thing. If you're producing a quality product people will gravitate towards it. Competing coverages are more likely to produce quality products, just like competing programs produce higher quality swimmers. As far as media coverages, two is better than one and certainly better than none. Don't even get me started on the major networks and media outlets that own the rights to events that they don't even cover. When people try to justify that one to me it just makes my brain hurt.

Exclusivity is something we see in the major sports. The NFL network is an example that I hear about all the time. But the NFL was successful long before the network restricted access to the athletes and coaches. Even in a sport like football its arguable what success that kind of exclusivity has had. Furthermore we are as far from a main stream sport as the silver medal was to team USA in the 800 free relay this summer. We can't even find sponsors for all of our elite Olympic athletes. Why? They don't get the exposure they deserve. I recently asked the powers that be if I could come spend a couple days at the national team camp taking place right now in San Diego. I was told that the athletes "had earned the right to a distraction free, media free training camp." I would argue that they've earned the right to receive exposure and media attention.

It's a new era of journalism. Anybody can do it, but not everybody can be good at it. We have the tools to bring a bright light of exposure that our sport has never felt. This is a gift, but one that demands quality. The sooner we embrace this new era the sooner we can start producing the highest quality coverages of our sport. The Olympics are a great presentation of swimming, but we can't wait 4 years for quality coverage. And we no longer have to.