In 1844, Samuel Morse tapped out his first coded sentence: “What hath God wrought!” And in the 170 years since then, the tools that have been wrought have been increasingly wonderful and terrifying. You really can’t legislate the more ill effects away, but the bright side is that they are double-edged swords, and those who misuse them are also prone to them.
On the topic of tools run amok: A passage from a Cleveland Plain Dealer article by Paul Hoynes explaining how the Indians signing of outfielder David Murphy, meant to be kept a secret for a while, spread accidentally at first and then virally:
“The Indians signing of free agent outfielder David Murphy to a two-year $12 million deal didn’t belong in the same airspace, let along the flight path, of Seattle’s deal with Cano. Still, it will go down as the most intriguing of the winter because the story was first reported by Murphy’s five-year-old daughter, Faith, at her Dallas-area preschool.
The deal wasn’t officially announced until Nov. 25 even though it hit Twitter on Nov. 19. The trigger to the story – a lesson on the meaning of Thanksgiving at Faith’s preschool.
‘She was in preschool and they were learning about Pilgrims and Indians,’ Murphy told reporters on the day his deal became official. ‘She spoke up that her dad was going to the Indians. Obviously, the word spreads quickly because of social media. It’s not the best situation, but it’s a good story to tell her when she gets older.’
There are no more scoops in the news business — at least not in the traditional sense. Breaking news hits the Internet in a matter of seconds. No one knows that better than a general manager of a big league baseball team, but even Chris Antonetti was taken back by a text he received from a reporter concerning Murphy.
‘Initially, I didn’t know how it broke,’ said Antonetti, entering his fourth year as Indians general manager. ‘Then I got a text from a writer and it said, ‘There is a kindergarten teacher in Texas Tweeting that David Murphy is going to be an Indian. I said, OK.’
Some back tracking was needed to see how the story leaked.”