New Media – New Style – New Tour de France

June 30, 2012

Just wanted to share with you a quick comment on social media tools, journalism and spoilers. From this point forward – as the 2012 Tour de France begins – I’m leaving it up to the audience to accept responsibility.

Responsibility for knowing or keeping themselves insulated from Tour results.

Responsibility for either sharing or keeping the results of the Tour secret from others.

And responsibility for enjoying the Tour de France in their own special way.

For eight years, I’ve written about and shared Tour de France results and other information. During this period, I’ve taken it upon myself to keep results secret until a sufficient time had passed (at least hours and sometimes a full day) so I didn’t create a ‘spoiler’ moment for readers.

That’s out the window. Social tools make it far too easy for anyone who wants to be connected to find out what’s going on. Nobody online obeys the unwritten rule of ‘no spoilers’ and I’m not going to swim against that tide.

If you don’t want to know what happened until you get home and watch it NBC Sports or the DVR feed of Eurosport, then unplug. It will be a good test for you.

So, let’s get this party started. I’m typing this as I watch my taped version of the Prologue. I don’t know the results, but will know soon enough. By the way, if you watch the Twitter feed on this very blog, it probably is rife with results info already.

I hope you can enjoy the Tour as much as I do – even knowing that results might not be hidden from your eyes at all times.