Darren Rovell: CNBC’s Multi-Beat, Multi-Platform Game-Changer

Certainly, with the exception maybe of Jane Wells, you cover the biggest breadth of information of anyone on CNBC.

Sometimes it’s video games, sometimes it’s just fun stories… I mean, after Jane, that’s probably true.

Yeah, she appears on air in like, a kayak going down a river.

Yeah, or on a farm in Iowa or something. Jane and I are of the same ilk – we both like crazy, fun business stories. So sometimes it’s me pitching, and sometimes it’s just that I’m Mister Fun that I get some of those stories.

So, let’s take your recent special on infomercials, for example. Was that something that you were interested in given your background and interest in branding?

NASCAR was my most recent special, but the one before that was the infomercials, although we re-did it after Billy Mays died. But yeah! What happened was, the blog is a big part of what I do –

It’s a great site.

– it’s something that I’ve really had fun with and I feel like you can’t just appear on TV for a couple of minutes. I mean, to some people who only watched ESPN, I disappeared off the face of the earth. And then for others, for those who only watch CNBC, it’s like, who is this guy? So the web puts it all together. And the year before, I did a minor league logo bracket on the site, which did really well from a hits standpoint. I got a lot of votes. So in March I did an infomercial product bracket because I just saw what was going on and I thought – this is like a reverse economic indicator! As we’re doing worse here, there’s more infomercials on!

CNBC itself has had some choice infomercials.

It was hard to avoid. So I said, we gotta do something on this. So I actually pitched on a Thursday, and that Monday I was down in Florida at an infomercial conference. So, yeah I mean that’s something that – I don’t just read the sports section, I read all business stories and I’d like to think that I can kind of branch out. That turned out very well and I’m very happy with what I could do.

Given Mediaite’s media focus, I’d love to know: what’s your routine? What do you read and where do you get your inspiration?

I used to have RSS feeds but now Twitter has destroyed those. I used to have about 200 blogs that I read off Bloglines, and since I started on Twitter I have actually not gone to that page once. Interesting!

You know, Twitter has definitely changed my reporting life. Because first of all, there’s nothing to be thrown out anymore. If you’ve got a lead on something and you can’t get anything going, or if it’s even been shot down, it still might be worth 140 characters. Nothing’s garbage anymore, that’s what I’ve learned. Though at the same time you obviously have to be really careful. I learned you have to be really careful about re-tweeting people, because people then delete your re-tweet and they credit you. So obviously you’ve got to be careful and not do anything stupid, because the CNBC name is on there. So I can’t really do anything about, you know, ‘I just ate a roast beef sandwich.’ Not like I’d want to.

CNBC has been great in terms of giving me some guidance as to what I should be doing, and also giving me freedom. The guidance is obviously: drive people back to the website. But you know, also going with my discretion as to what’s a blog and what’s not, and in some cases I would think it’s not a blog and maybe I’d make it a blog. Last night, for example, I wrote a non-sports business Tweet: “I saw Nadal’s awesome fist-pump and I said, ‘he has the best fist-pump in sports.’” And then I get fifty replies – no, it’s Tiger! No, it’s … Todd Reesing! The quarterback from Kansas! I mean it’s like, what? And then people sent the link and I was like wow, that is good! I never really paid attention to it. So, as journalists, most of us have learned it’s not a one way street, it’s a dialogue with people. The more that dialogue can come out, the better.

Regarding Twitter, it seems that in the past six months ago, a number of teams and a number of leagues have been caught off guard by how interested in it their athletes have become. I know you said earlier that the athletes don’t want to talk to anyone, so it’s interesting to see that many of the athletes do apparently want to talk to SOMEONE.

Yeah, they want to talk to themselves. (laughs) Basically what happened is, I think in ‘98-‘99 there were a whole bunch of athlete websites, predecessors to blogs. And athletes didn’t go along with it. It was before its time. And that was because the athletes weren’t directly typing it in to some content editor. So, you know, now it just seems so easy. And I think teams were caught off-guard because they didn’t have time to warn players not to be stupid, I think.

And I don’t think anyone has really overreacted. I think there was a lot played on ESPN’s Twitter policy, but the fact is that the ultimate goal is to drive revenue and they’ll figure that out. But from the players’ standpoint, I can understand for the NFL why there’s no Tweeting during a game, or why you can’t give up confidential business information about teams. I think there might have been an overreaction on that $2,500 fine about the food.

So, ESPN… I know you used to work there, and they’re kind of always in an interesting position. They touch everything: they’re an entertainment business, they’re a journalism business, they’re rights holders.

I will say, on that point, that over my 6 years at ESPN I wrote over a thousand articles for ESPN.com as the business reporter. The one thing I did not cover was the media business, though, for the most part. I mean I’d cover, like, a rights deal fee, but I wouldn’t critique media. That’s one thing I wouldn’t do. But anyway, there was not one time, there was not one time, where I was told ‘don’t write a business story on this.’ So at the outset, I think people make more of it than it really is with these conspiracy theories. The talent at ESPN – the ESPN reporters, the editors or the producers – they don’t have time to come up with conspiracy theories, so I think that’s just overdone. And I understand the broad Twitter stance that they had to make. That makes sense.

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This is an opinion piece. The views expressed in this article are those of just the author.