Off his feed

An old VeloNews 'toon by David Brintoni depicting Charles Pelkey at the VeloSwap flea market.

Well, the Tour hasn’t even started yet and Lance Armstrong has already dropped someone — VeloNews.com’s Charles Pelkey, from his Twitter feed.

No stranger to social media, Pelkey used Facebook to announce having been 86′d from Armstrong’s exclusive private club, which at last count had just 1,249,162 members. Noting that he had been blocked from the feed “at the request of the user,” Pelkey added, “I wonder if Dan Schorr felt like this when he made Nixon’s enemies’ list.”

Shoot, ask him, Charles. He’s on Twitter, too — and the enemies list is one topic ol’ Dan is always delighted to discuss.

• Extra credit reading: Check out the Neiman Journalism Lab’s four-part series on the shifting world of sports journalism, wherein “the subjects of coverage are becoming the creators of coverage — and what implications those shifts have for the rest of the news business.”

July 3rd, 2009 | Category: Bike stuff, Journalism | Subscribe to comments | Comments are currently closed | Trackback URL

7 Responses to “Off his feed”

1. 
   1
   khal spencer:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 9:22 am

   Maybe I’m biased, but seems to me that Tex is shooting himself in the foot.

   Sometimes, as in Dan Schorr being on Nixon’s Enemies List, such an acknowledgment reminds me of that old expression that there are some people whose shit list it is an honor to be on.

2. 
   2
   Jeff in PetroMetro:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 12:32 pm

   Is anyone else at VN cut off? Is Lance, Inc. starting a U.S. based racing magazine and this is the 1st shot across the bow–or is it just personal? Did Mavic call Trek and Trek called Lance to punch VN’s nose the day before the TdF? Inquiring minds want to know–but don’t want to know bad enough to create a Facebook account and read Pelkey’s announcement.

3. 
   3
   Charlie:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 4:43 pm

   No fireworks in CO springs? They should read your blog!! Happy 4th!!!

4. 
   4
   James:
   July 3rd, 2009 at 8:58 pm

   That bites for Charles, but maybe he’ll be the only person who “The Name We Can’t Always Mention” will drop before he himself gets dropped. Either that, or ol’ “The Name We Can’t Always Mention” wants to be ignored. We can only hope…..

   Let the ‘LoveFest of All Things Tex-related’ begin.

   “Yippe Ki-Yah, M_th_rf_ck_r!!”

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   5
   steve o:
   July 6th, 2009 at 6:17 am

   Asinine. It takes two seconds to create a new username and sign back up. Blocking someone is just putting a big red target on your back.

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   Dave:
   July 6th, 2009 at 9:45 am

   I guess Charles needs to start sucking up with more enthusiasm like Wilcockson. Anything less than the constant praise with no hard questions style made famous by asskissers Sherwen, Roll and Liggett isnt appreciated by the Capital Sports machine.

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   Chris Neumann:
   July 7th, 2009 at 4:19 pm

   Hey Charles,

   Wow, interesting to see that Lance is managing things like this. You’ve always been pretty controversial and persistent in trying to get to the bottom of things, and you’re bound to piss a few people off doing that, oh well. The only message Lance can send by blocking you is that he doesn’t like you or what you’re doing is not cool, as it’s certainly easy enough for you to have a different twitter account to see what he’s saying if you want.

   The same thing is happening in music - artists are building up large twitter followings, and that is certainly going to shift the balance of power if the music companies don’t wise up and include the rights to the twitter username in their employment contracts. The interesting question for the future of journalism is how this shift of power will change things going forward.