[dropcap]W[/dropcap]elcome to the latest installment of 140+, a series of features on some of Twitter’s most influential – yet somewhat mysterious – sports personalities.
As active members of the sports Twitter community, we’ve found that we often don’t know all that much about the people behind our favorite accounts. These people are constantly present as we share viewing experiences and occasionally interact as friends would, but we only know as much about them as their 140 character updates allow.
The idea of this series is to help inject some additional personality and background into some of our favorite follows (and hopefully yours too) on the Twitter dot com while finding out about how and why they do what they do, the tools and strategies they’re using to grow their audience and their thoughts on things they care about and are well-versed in.
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[dropcap]T[/dropcap]his week we got a chance to talk with Jimmy Traina (@JimmyTraina), writer of Fox Sports’ “Big Buzz” feature that aggregates some of the best sports content on the web every day. Jimmy recently joined the Fox team after many years at Sports Illustrated, where he created and ran SI.com’s hugely popular “Hot Clicks” twice-daily content roundup.
Jimmy’s reach and audience – not only on Fox Sports dot com but also on social media as well – has made him a very influential personality within the world of digital sports media. With more than 51,000 followers on Twitter, Jimmy’s commentary on the daily happenings in the realm of sports and culture rarely goes unnoticed.
Kiley Kmiec, one of Next Impulse’s co-founders, and I recently sat down with Jimmy to talk about his online presence, the transition from SI to Fox, and a never-before-told story about meeting Jerry Seinfeld.
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So, first off, where did you grow up and go to school?
I am Long Island through and through. I grew up in Long Island, NY and went to school on Long Island at C.W. Post, and I still live on Long Island.
What’d you study?
I was a broadcasting major in college and it was when the Internet was in its early phases. I always wanted to be a broadcaster growing up so it was natural to start there.
Following college, my first job was in radio at a small station in Long Island but I was reporting regular news and not sports, so it was miserable. I moved on from there back into sports at Scorephone, knowing it was a decent middle step to sticking around in sports.
Following that, I landed a job at the Associated Press writing game previews for all sports. It was at the A.P. that a colleague of mine jumped ship for SI.com. A bit later he let me know of an editorial assistant position which was open and I jumped at the chance.
My first gig there literally involved typing old magazine stories into a computer. I moved my way up and around the organization for the next decade or so. I was there six years before I started Hot Clicks in 2006. There weren’t other mainstream sports site that had a piece of content that combined a link roundup with pop culture with the writer’s opinion in one piece.
When did you join Twitter?
To be honest, I’m not exactly sure. I think it was sometime around 5 or 6 years ago and back then it was great. I joined at the urging of my good friend Bryan Graham, who worked at SI at the time, and as soon as I joined I loved it. This may be a weird word to describe Twitter back then, but I felt like it was more “intimate.” There were only a few people from SI on there at the time – I was maybe the third or fourth – and it seemed like it was friendlier.
Give us your State Of The Union for Twitter…
Twitter is extremely important for what I do. It has also made the reporting of stories “first” much less significant. We can now all go to one place (Twitter) and see the stories breaking at the same time. It is an invaluable tool for sports fans and personalities and is by far the best news source around. Pretty much, if you’re a sports fan you NEED to be on Twitter these days.
Is there a flip side?
If you Tweet a lot and put out your opinion there are assholes everywhere. It is amazing to me how many people on Twitter follow people they hate. What the hell is the point of that?
I think the biggest problem on Twitter actually lies in reading comprehension (or lack thereof). I can’t begin to tell you the number of times I have Tweeted out an opinion and someone will twist my words into something unrelated and draw out a far-fetched argument which wasn’t there to begin with.
Besides reading comprehension, my other biggest pet peeve with Twitter are assholes who say ‘stick to sports.’ I mean, how DARE someone use Twitter to share an opinion. What a shocking thing to do!
Give us some of your favorite follows…
Mike Francesa (@MikeFrancesaNY) is my No.1 favorite follow. Some of my favorite athletes to follow are Arian Foster (@arianfoster), who is actually one of the more interesting athletes on there. I love Kobe (@kobebryant) on Twitter but he doesn’t tweet that much these days. Johnny Manziel (@jmanziel2), because he is the center of the sports universe these days. Brandon McCarthy (@BMcCarthy32) is hilarious. .
Other accounts I love: Sean Doolittle (@WhatWouldDOODo), Brett Anderson (@BAnderson_30), Tom Crabtree (@itsCrab), MLB Stat Of The Day (@MLBStatOfTheDay), ESPN Stat/Info (@ESPNStatsInfo), and of course The Rock (@TheRock). Every picture The Rock posts there’s just muscles and veins popping out everywhere. It’s insane.
What sites/blogs are must-reads for you daily?
I’m not going to sit here and pretend like I’m some high-brow guy, I read the NY Post and Daily Mail everyday. I’ll throw TMZ in the mix as well. One of my favorite sites is still TV TATTLE.com. And, of course, I think Deadspin is still the grand daddy of all sports blogs.
You recently left Sports Illustrated for FOX SPORTS. How is the transition going?
It is going great! I obviously miss the team at SI but Fox has been great to me.
The main differences are the format of my gig, working from home now, and more interviews with athletes. Instead of doing two sets of Hot Clicks a day I am now doing the Big Buzz in the morning and then blogging stories throughout the day.
I’ve felt for a while that the twice a day Hot Clicks format was not really the best format in the day and age of Twitter. You have people coming into work in the morning and, let’s be honest, they don’t want to work. They’re looking to not work and that is why the morning links work so well. By the afternoon everyone has already seen the other stories since Twitter. On an aside, Twitter has almost rendered all roundups much less significant.
And how is working from home?
Fox Sports doesn’t have an office in New York so the biggest change has been working from home and, honestly, I am loving it way more than I thought I ever would. From a personal perspective it is fantastic. I am still enjoying the Big Buzz in the morning and then blogging stories through the day at my choosing is nice.
What’s the coolest thing you’ve done in the past six months?
I don’t think I’ve ever told this story publicly, but it’s actually kind of a two-part thing. I got to sit down and interview Jerry Seinfeld for the podcast and, first of all, that was awesome in its own right. The podcast went great and everything and Jerry was fantastic as always, but three times during the podcast he called me Pete. It didn’t bother me at all and I wasn’t going to correct him. We had a 15-minute time limit on the podcast so I wasn’t going to waste one second telling him my name wasn’t Pete. I just figured we’d edit it out and it would fine, which it was.
But then Jerry’s publicist called me and kept apologizing for the mistake. I told him it wasn’t a big deal, it happens. I guess he did an interview the night before with a guy from Buzzfeed named Pete and just got confused. Like I said, it didn’t bother me.
But, as I’m typing up the blog post a few hours later, I got a call on my phone with a blocked caller ID. At first I was like, no way I’m going to answer a blocked caller ID. But as it kept ringing I figured it might be important, so I answered. On the other end of the phone I heard “Hi Jimmy, it’s Jerry Seinfeld.” I almost had a heart attack.
Long story short, he said he was really sorry about the mistake and we had a nice chat. It was awesome.
What would you say your dream job is?
I’ve always wanted to work in sports and I love what I do now, but I think my all-time favorite dream job would be play-by-play guy for the New York Yankees.
Your roundups always feature a highlighted female of your choosing. Who is your favorite Lovely Lady of the Day/Fox-y Lady of all-time?
Hmmm, that’s a tough one. I feel like I should say Kate Upton for traffic reasons…but I’d go with Jamie Edmondson. She was a longtime friend of Hot Clicks and now The Big Buzz.
I love Friday Night Lights so my last ever LLOD at SI was Minka Kelly, who wished me good luck on Twitter when I went to Fox, so I have to mention her. For an obscure one, Rosie Roff was a good one. I remember seeing a picture of her in this red bikini and, man, she’s great.
(Ed. Note: We agree.)
If ‘Seinfeld’ was still on today, which athlete would you most want to see guest star?
I think I’d have to say Rob Gronkowski. Can’t you just imagine him and Kramer hanging out? It would be legendary.
If you got the ‘Late Night’ gig, who would be your first three guests & musical performance?
Oh man. First, Derek Jeter. Second, Howard Stern. And third? Hm, I think I would have to get a female in there…so Kate Upton. Musical guest would be Paul McCartney. I know he’s not as great as he used to be but, from a historical perspective, I don’t think I could think of anyone bigger.
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Big-time thanks goes out to Jimmy for taking the time to sit down with me for this piece. If you haven’t already, you can follow him below:
Want to find out more about one of your favorite Twitter follows? Send us a suggestion for our next 140+ feature by emailing me at pete [at] next-impulse.com
