November 20, 2009 · 2:54 PM
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See You Later, Dater

Adrian Dater, the Avs beat writer for the Denver Post, has deleted his Twitter account. In his blog post titled “So long Twitter“, Dater attributes his departure mostly to the controversy surrounding his tweet about the alleged shouting match involving Flames defenseman Dion Phaneuf and another member of the team. The information in the tweet was overheard from other reporters and wasn’t confirmed.

Dater used his Twitter account for a variety of things, including linking his articles, on the fly analysis of games, and small glimpses of his personal life. All of these are perfectly acceptable uses, but the casual nature of the medium seemed to cause a momentary lapse of judgment. This caused some criticism to come down on Dater, but this isn’t the first time the @adater account had been the focus of negative feedback. After a Versus column by Dater suggested the Nashville Predators should give up, the Preds Twitter community rained down on Dater with some pretty serious fury. How is this situation any different?

The only difference this time around is that nobody disagreed with Dater’s opinion, they called out a major journalistic faux pas. Why not use this as a learning experience instead of an excuse to cut and run? We’ve heard so many people in the “old media” camp say that blogging and other forms of “new media” breed journalistic irresponsibility. What are we supposed to think when it’s a journalist that’s committing those very sins? Everyone is capable of misusing these new forms of media, but that’s no reason to shun them.

UPDATE – @adater is back on Twitter after 3 days of hating it.

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  • http://twitter.com/dulcedementia Kelly Tidd

    If he wants to stop using Twitter, that's fine with me, but I take some offense in the way he portrays Twitter in his article. Like it's just a bunch of 15 year old kids running around without direction, when there's quite a bit of structure to it. This is the way the new generation gets it's information. It comes at us fast, but we've learned to sort through it all. If you can't understand how we do it, then don't be surprised when your medium isn't as popular as it used to be.

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  • http://twitter.com/stackiii @stackiii

    Interesting move here.

    In the interest of full disclosure, I was probably one of the more rabid fans in Preds nation to call Dater out for his sideways post on our opening night attendance figures. I have still have some things I'd like to say about his mother, but I will leave them out here because I really don't think they really add much to the discussion at this point.

    All that said, journalists report the news. Dater is a blogger. Maybe he also writes for a newspaper; but in either case, I classify him as an op-ed writer. Op-eds are not news. It would have been one thing to report Nashville's attendance figures and talk about the team's lease, the CBA, revenue-sharing, etc. But the minute he said the Predators should get out of Nashville, he made a normative judgment and ceased to be a journalist. We pounced on him because we know what our numbers are, we know what we're up against in terms of economic and growth perspectives. What we – a passionate fanbase who voluntarily and in an unpaid capacity pound the Nashville pavement literally every day to help increase sales and revenues – don't appreciate from Dater was his use of his position with a network that has an exclusive national television deal with the league to blast out something totally subjective; for those who might accuse me of the same, I defy you to find any other Versus staff who have been so critical, at least in the post-lockout era. In short, I hate Dater for the same reason I hate Burnside over at ESPN. If you're going to report, report. But if you're going to blog opinions, be prepared for the blowback. That's the beauty of web 2.0 platforms like blogs and social networking sites; the content is regulated via crowdsourcing. Sounds to me like Dater doesn't like people disagreeing with him; I blog about politics and work in social media, and I know what a challenge it can be to face criticism from what is literally a GLOBAL audience. But as a political blogger, I also developed some nuance over time (…”some”…); I didn't tuck my tail and flee the space.

    Whether or not Dater uses Twitter isn't really a problem for me, and shouldn't really be for anyone else either. Twitter (or lack thereof) is not Dater's problem. Publishing opinion pieces and unconfirmed rumors from second and third-hand sources under the guise of a nationally-credentialed hockey journalist is Dater's problem. He is dishonest in what he does and abusive to boot. In any case, his fans will still be able to read his blog, and his enemies (like me) will still be able to rip him on his blog. I can see how some see this as a step backwards, and maybe it is; but Twitter still isn't as popular as, say, Facebook, and its growth has plateaued. Yes, I get my news here most of the time, but it's not the only platform on the web. This is not like losing George Stephanopolous.

  • http://twitter.com/HockeyPhool Scott Thurston

    Adrian sounds more like a petulant child than a professional journalist. “They called me names so I'll take my ball and go home”.

    Give us more Terry Frei, please!

  • http://twitter.com/HockeyPhool Scott Thurston

    Adrian sounds more like a petulant child than a professional journalist. “They called me names so I'll take my ball and go home”.

    Give us more Terry Frei, please!