Joe Paterno in the Blogosphere: You are Penn State and Penn State is You

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Erin Korogodsky is Lithium's social media quarterback.  Obsessed with social media, Erin has worked with clients like Newell Rubbermaid, Wieden Kennedy and Vista Print to monitor their brands and brainstorm engagement strategy.  She is a frequent blogger on the Lithosphere (as ErinKoro) and you can follow her on twitter at @erinkoro and @LithiumTech 

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Joe Paterno has been the football coach at Penn State for over 40 years and involved with the team for over 60 years.  He’s not just the football coach; he’s the figurative leader of the University.  Other leaders have come and gone.  JoPA is the institution.  Joe Paterno is Penn State. 

Let’s go back to Novemeber 4^th .  Just over a week ago, there were 22 blog posts on that day including the words “Joe Paterno OR JoPa.”  For those blogs, there wasn’t any thing really trending.  I suspect that this is now known as “the good old days” in State College, PA.

Fast forward 24 hours to November 5^th and there are 26 blog posts – not a huge increase but this is where the conversation changes.  Trends start jumping right out at you – the newest words are Sandusky, Abuse and Sex.

 

Along with a vile shift in conversation, on 11/6/11, the volume begins to spike from there and its not letting up anytime soon. Yesterday, the coverage was 5500 blog posts and today, 11/11/11, its about tripled to 18,000.

Yes, its Sandusky and NOT Paterno that’s charged with a sexual crime against a child  (children).

Two other university officials are charged with perjury.  This story has been full debate about laws vs. rules and rules vs. responsibilities. 

The social voice tells another story; the social story tells us that this is about responsibilities vs. values. Rules, laws and even responsibilities do change. 

Values, in general, do not.

Paterno is the head of this institution and he is being held accountable for its demise – maybe not in the eyes of the law (yet) but certainly in the eyes of the public. 

Paterno is standing behind his “obligation” to report to the university authorities but in the eyes of the public, he had a much bigger responsibility than that. 

The frequent words, shown below by date, reveal that Paterno had to go.  There is no separating him from the actions of the institution he lead, figuratively or otherwise. 

Even the Penn State faithful, who identify themselves with the mantra, “I am Penn State” cannot be heard over the volume of outrage.  Faithful or not, they represent only 1% of the entire conversation.