{"id":1236,"date":"2010-07-07T00:06:45","date_gmt":"2010-07-07T04:06:45","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/?p=1236"},"modified":"2010-07-07T00:06:45","modified_gmt":"2010-07-07T04:06:45","slug":"hot-searches-in-tennis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/hot-searches-in-tennis\/","title":{"rendered":"Hot Searches In Tennis"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/pictures.photo\/sports\/wimbledon-championships\/image\/9290173?term=serena+williams\" target=\"_blank\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" src=\"http:\/\/view3.picapp.com\/pictures.photo\/image\/9290173\/wimbledon-championships\/wimbledon-championships.jpg?size=380&#038;imageId=9290173\" border=\"0\" width=\"380\" title=\"Wimbledon Championships 2010 Winners Ball\" height=\"264\" oncontextmenu=\"return false;\" ondrag=\"return false;\" onmousedown=\"return false;\" alt=\"LONDON, ENGLAND - JULY 04: Serena Williams of USA and Rafael Nadal of Spain with their winners trophies at the Wimbledon Championships 2010 Winners Ball at the InterContinental Park Lane Hotel on July 4, 2010 in London, England. (Photo by Julian Finney\/Getty Images)\" \/><\/a><script type=\"text\/javascript\" src=\"http:\/\/view.picapp.com\/\/JavaScripts\/OTIjs.js\"><\/script><\/p>\n<p>I\u2019ve been looking at the subject of trending topics and journalism lately. The conversation goes like this: Traditional media outlets such as newspapers and magazines are drowning in the world of the online mediasphere. Blogs and websites dedicated to such subjects as sports and celebrities with little or no subscription costs short of a video ad or text ads running down the side of the page are taking over the news world.<\/p>\n<p>In order to catch up and make a profit instead of continuing to lose money, media outlets are replacing editors with search engines. Instead of a group of gray suited editors meeting in the newsroom each morning and handing out writing assignments \u2013 and essentially dictating the subject of discussion for its readers which used to be much of the population \u2013 new media sites are looking at hot search topics on Twitter, Google, and Yahoo and assigning articles based on those results.<\/p>\n<p>No matter what you might think of this turn of events, and I certainly find it distressing that TMZ.com was valued at $100 millions dollars earlier this year while the LA Times is slowly fading away, let\u2019s see what this might look like in the world of tennis media.<\/p>\n<p>I went to <a href=\"http:\/\/monitter.com\">monitter.com<\/a> and entered the search term \u201ctennis\u201d and found the following trending topics on twitter: <b>Serena Williams<\/b>, <b>Rafael Nadal<\/b>, and the ATP grass court event in Newport. Serena is trending because she\u2019s on the front of <a href=http:\/\/si.com>Sports Illustrated<\/a> this week, Rafa because he\u2019s taking over <b>Roger Federer<\/b>\u2019s place as the best player in the game, and Newport because <b>Nicolas Mahut<\/b> is playing and that, my friends, comes from the biggest tennis topic of the year so far \u2013 as decided by google\u2019s trend tracker &#8211; that never ending match between Mahut and <b>John Isner<\/b> in the first round of Wimbledon.<\/p>\n<p>Next I went over to <a href=\"http:\/\/www.google.com\/trends\/hottrends\">Google\u2019s Hot Searches<\/a> and looked at their list of most searched items. As you could probably guess, no tennis item was high on the list. So I decided to pair one of the trending tennis topics with one of Google\u2019s Hot Searches to push my blog post closer to the top of Google\u2019s search page \u2013 that\u2019s the goal right? <\/p>\n<p>I started with Hot Search topic <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Caster_Semenya\">Caster Semenya<\/a>. After winning the African Junior Championships in both the 800 meter and 1500 meter races last year, Semenya was barred from competing while her gender was verified. Competitors claimed that she is built like a man and so competing against her is unfair. She\u2019s a trending topic today because the International Association of Athletics Federations (IAAF) announced that Semenya has been cleared to return to competition as a woman. <\/p>\n<p>Which brings me back to Serena. Did anyone ever complain that it\u2019s unfair to compete against Serena because she\u2019s just too strong? She definitely got a bosom and a big butt, but if her game was jello wrestling rather than tennis \u2013 which requires at least a bit of finesse, would she be facing a gender test before being allowed to compete in the next event? Or, as <a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/dollfacebarbie\">@dollfacebarbie<\/a> put it, \u201cWhy do Serena Williams look so Hard?\u201d<\/p>\n<p>And then there\u2019s <b>LeBron James<\/b> and his pals <b>Dwyane Wade<\/b> and <b>Chris Bosh<\/b>. These athletes are the most valuable free agents in the NBA this summer and they are dictating the lives of many other NBA players at the moment. Salivating teams are dumping and trading players left and right to free up enough money to sign one, two, or maybe all three of these bigtime free agents.<\/p>\n<p>What\u2019s interesting about this process is the circus surrounding it. Particularly the cameras following Wade and Bosh who are being filmed as part of a documentary. Teams ask the players to turn the cameras off during their sales pitches to Wade and Bosh but you have to think that some of them feel more like fodder for a new <a href=\"http:\/\/en.wikipedia.org\/wiki\/Borat:_Cultural_Learnings_of_America_for_Make_Benefit_Glorious_Nation_of_Kazakhstan\">Borat movie<\/a>  than a serious contender for either player\u2019s services.<\/p>\n<p>Which leads me to wonder, what about tennis documentaries or reality shows? We had a Serena and Venus reality show and that was nice, but what about a reality show that follows a player on tour, or a reality show that works the coaching merry go-round on the ATP and WTA tour by choosing a player\u2019s next coach?<\/p>\n<p><b>Marcos Baghdatis<\/b> fired both his coach and his trainer this past week. Baggy\u2019s a great subject for a reality show because he\u2019s good looking and he\u2019s an emotional and charismatic player. He also has a history of playing well on big stages and the American audience knows him from a captivating five set thriller with <b>Andre Agassi<\/b> during Agassi\u2019s last U.S. Open. <\/p>\n<p><b>John McEnroe<\/b> could be <b>Donald Trump<\/b> and fire prospective coaches until there\u2019s only one left. Tennis magazines could follow the burgeoning relationship between Baggy and his newly chosen coach. For sure the topic should trend high when they break up \u2013 honest, the top two stories on Yahoo today involve the breakup of Jake and Vienna, the resulting couple of <a href=\"http:\/\/abc.go.com\/shows\/the-bachelor\">ABC\u2019s reality show The Bachelor<\/a>. <\/p>\n<p>Look, reality shows make their own news. That\u2019s the point. The point is to generate a looping news cycle by creating a product that involves the audience and thus creates a trending topic. Media sites then assign stories on the trending topic and celebrity magazines join in and you\u2019re golden.<\/p>\n<p>Whaddya think? Short of bringing back <b>Anna Kournikova<\/b>, how can we make tennis trend?<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"http:\/\/twitter.com\/ninarota\">twitter.com\/ninarota<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>I\u2019ve been looking at the subject of trending topics and journalism lately. The conversation goes like this: Traditional media outlets such as newspapers and magazines are drowning in the world of the online mediasphere. Blogs and websites dedicated to such subjects as sports and celebrities with little or no subscription costs short of a video [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1236","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-uncategorized"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1236"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1236\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1236"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1236"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/ninarota.com\/tennis\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1236"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}