Monday morning brought the unofficial beginning of the National Football League’s new year. The legal tampering period serves as a day for NFL teams to maneuver rosters with trades and sign the biggest free agents before officially signing players beginning later today at 4 p.m. A country starved for football information keeps their cell phones nearby to check out the latest on their favorite team through their favorite social media feed.
The day serves as a national holiday for NFL insiders who are plugged in with sources, agents, and team personnel. The competitive juices flow between multiple cell phones and social feeds. The race is on to break the biggest NFL headline of the day, where being first could make a career on the single biggest day to prove one’s worth in sports media.
Then X, formerly known as Twitter, shut down. And all hell broke loose.
If timing is everything, yet there is never a perfect time for anything, Monday morning proved a lesson that those who work in media have known for far too long but have yet to address.
The media is too dependent on X, and it’s due for rehab.
Sports Media Lost Without Their X
According to The New York Times on Monday, X experienced three major outages between the hours of 6 a.m. and noon on the East Coast, with a peak of nearly 41,000 reports of outages at one point. X is currently owned by Elon Musk, who purchased the platform in 2022. Following the outage, Musk took to X to post that there was a massive cyberattack against the platform. He also claimed that his platform is “attacked every day,” but this attack was executed with “a lot of resources.”
What happened on Monday should serve as a warning to everyone who leans on social media as their primary news platform, both for distribution and delivery.
For this example, let’s focus on how sports media was completely flummoxed on Monday.
The interruptions with X on Monday morning forced NFL fans into a warped sense of reality. Where do they go? Where do they turn? According to Google Trends, three of the top five related queries for searches of “Twitter down” mentioned NFL free agency.
Is this really a shock to anyone, considering how massive the NFL has become and how dependent sports media needs X to share instant information?
Sports media personalities fared even worse. With X down, how would sports talk show hosts deliver news of signings to their listening audience, salivating for the latest updates on their favorite NFL teams? Several notable sports radio personalities took to other forms of social media to express their frustration with X being down. Some even asked their followers on other platforms to be ‘part of the team’ and share tips if they saw anything regarding trades or signings.
In addition, seasoned veteran NFL insiders didn’t know where to turn to break the news they were gathering. Ian Rapoport of the NFL Network struggled so much that he told The Pat McAfee Show during an appearance on Monday that he had to outsource the information to a third party just to get it out.
“This is the weirdest free agency frenzy day in the history of the world. Twitter isn’t working,” said Rapoport. “I have a third party, one of my good friends who works with me named Shahab. I sent him tweets, and for some reason, his Twitter is working. The only one on Earth, so he has been sending tweets via me to the interwebs, which is the only way to get news out.”
Adam Schefter of ESPN was also between a rock and a hard place. Schefter was unable to communicate with his nearly 11.5 million followers on X, so he was limited to posts on Threads (where he has a following of 612,000) and television appearances to break news. Schefter also cleverly worked in some cross-promotion, encouraging viewers to sign up for ESPN app alerts for breaking news.
Even more surprising, NFL teams themselves weren’t immune to the chaos of X withdrawal. NFL Network insider Mike Garafolo shared this insight on the network Monday morning:
“Agents and team types are hitting me up and asking, ‘What are you guys doing?’” stated Garafolo. “Because they follow this stuff just as much as we do. So, when X goes down, they’re operating without a net here. They have no idea where to find all this stuff.”
Have you heard the warning yet?
“If you thought we were important, wait till Twitter goes down,” said Rapoport during an appearance on NFL Network. “The only way to get this kind of information is right here on the NFL Network. Forget about Twitter. Just watch TV.”
Think about that statement for a second.
An NFL insider joking about getting information by watching television—while on television—because a social media platform is down.
What a world we live in.
Media Addicted To Their X
Social media has fundamentally altered how we communicate, deliver, and consume information in all forms. X, in particular, has become an addiction for media professionals, who constantly seek to feed the thirst for information, only to fall victim to algorithms where follower counts mean job security.
If information is power, X is King Kong.
A Pew Research study from September 2024 found that despite Facebook and YouTube outpacing all other social media platforms in total users, 59% of X users get their news from the platform. This is the single highest percentage of any user base reporting that they rely on a platform for news and information, with 64% of those surveyed being male.
Traditional media outlets have grown increasingly dependent on social following and engagement on X to drive clicks for advertising. Newspapers, local television news departments, and talk radio brands all rely on the ability to log in, consume, and distribute content for further consumption. As staff sizes shrink and the ability to break news locally diminishes, the pressure to be first intensifies.
The rapid evolution of the internet has completely reshaped the media landscape. The news cycle has become so accelerated that very few can keep up, and on a national level, the participants are in a constant race to be first.
This is why so many media outlets have become solely dependent on X to distribute news as quickly as possible and to be first as often as possible.
Until the platform goes dark.
Media’s ‘X Moment’ For Opportunity
Here’s my warning for media in general:
The audience has always determined where to go for content, but it’s time for media to truly diversify its own portfolio. Media outlets can no longer afford to be so reliant on a single platform to break news stories and provide instant information. This means information on sports, politics, war, elections, weather events and more.
If the internet reshaped the landscape for media, it is now on the media to build stronger, more diverse distribution methods to serve users effectively across multiple platforms.
In other words, it’s time to get better at something else.
Media professionals have long taken advantage of the ease and convenience of 280 characters, growing complacent instead of strengthening their presence across all platforms for immediate news and information.
If timing is everything, and there is never a perfect time for anything,
Maybe, just maybe, this week’s example presents the perfect time for media to begin its rehab off X.
Barrett Media produces daily content on the music, news, and sports media industries. Stay updated, sign up for our newsletters and get the latest information delivered straight to your inbox.
John Mamola is Barrett Media’s sports editor and daily sports columnist. He brings over two decades of experience (Chicago, Tampa/St Petersburg) in the broadcast industry with expertise in brand management, sales, promotions, producing, imaging, hosting, talent coaching, talent development, web development, social media strategy and design, video production, creative writing, partnership building, communication/networking with a long track record of growth and success. He is a five-time recognized top 20 program director in a major market via Barrett Medi’s Top 20 series and has been honored internally multiple times as station/brand of the year (Tampa, FL) and employee of the month (Tampa, FL) by iHeartMedia. Connect with John by email at John@BarrettMedia.com.
The ethics of truth, transparency, and decency dictate that individuals and businesses leave X. Musk is one of the world’s most prominent ugly individuals, unashamed of his inherent racism and dishonesty.
It is ironic that Barrett has a “share this” X option considering the article’s subject matter.
You will not miss X.