Tim Kawakami has another bizarre story from Oakland, where Golden State's top public relations official has admitted to posting anonymous comments puffing up Warriors management on fan sites, specifically WarriorsWorld.net.The Warriors held a call with season ticket holders Thursday. Fan reaction was not great -- there's a lot of disillusionment around the Bay. The team's PR man, Raymond Ridder, admitted to Kawakami that he posted an anonymous comment in order to steer the discussion toward a more positive tone. This, um, didn't happen.
WW.net moderators traced the comment's IP back to Warriors headquarters. Kawakami made the call, and Ridder fessed up. It turns out Ridder also made some anonymous comments on WW.net last summer under the name "flunkster dude." In an odd bit of coincidence, one of these comments rips current FanHouse featured writer Matt Steinmetz (then writing for the San Francisco Examiner).
It's just another sign of how out of touch Warriors management has been. Instead of addressing fan concerns, the head of PR pretends to be an innocuous fan who sees the light on a message board ... and immediately gets caught. He actually accomplished the opposite of what he set out to do.
Astroturfing is a more notorious problem in political blogs, where operatives or writers make their case in comment threads under the shroud of anonymity. It's not looked upon highly.
Comments (Page 1 of 1)
This is surprising in the age of integrated marketing? Is there no limit to the naivete of sports writing? Thank God, these guys aren't covering politics. The NBA is one big advertisement for itself (where caring happens again and again). It is probably the worst offender in sports for packaging unreality. And the sports writers are complicit in this.
The sports writer's union (if there were such a thing) should pressure the league to ban playoff press conferences. What an advertisement for the profession? A room full of guys who know nothing about the game struggling to find a lead about character (which they do profess to know about). See the Denver Post today.
The NBA is a game of great skill. Enjoying it is really hard with all the hype that the league and the sports writing community participates in. Tim K is one of the worst. There are only two good sports writers on basketball in the Bay Area. One is Matt Steimetz, who you are lucky enough to have, and the other is Atma Brother No. 1 on one of the fan sites. You have some good guys on this site and I had high hopes for it, but in two days Tom Ziller has shown me he doesn't know much and he will pass along anything. What is more disturbing is that you see fit to lead with this story.
In a society like ours all the publicity is rigged. That's why they call it PR or hype. Warriors management is courting the fans for PR reasons, not to set the record straight. It's about time we just factor that in and get over the naive "how could this have happened." Well, here's how it could happen. It was planned. Get over it. The Warriors management may be terrible, but it is no worse than the Bay Area media. Maybe they deserve each other. Oh and one more thing, they gave us Ric Bucher. Aren't we lucky?