August 15, 2013

Going Viral: Our family's true story of stepping into a media vortex

By Joseph Ashby
"ESPN AssignmentDesk" read the YouTube message subject line. The email came Monday night, 24 hours after we posted a three-minute video of our two-year-old son making basketball shots. Tuesday morning on my Wichita-based radio program, I proudly announced that none other than ESPN was going to use our footage and thanked the listeners who shared the video link on their Facebook and Twitter pages. I left the broadcast house at 8am Tuesday to my aerospace job, just like every other work week. It turned out to be a week unlike any we had ever experienced. Media requests began to surge throughout the morning. Local news stations in Nevada, Arizona and Kansas called our home. My father-in-law was invited to join a mid-day news program in their native Reno, NV to talk about his young grandson's hoops prowess. By 11am, when my wife called me to explain what was happening, I had 75 new emails in my inbox. Another 75 by noon. Then calls rolled in from national shows. Good Morning...(Read Full Article)