Confirm or deny new OSU logo

When Oregon State’s supposed new logo was leaked by Sportslogos.net on Feb. 10, some obvious questions were raised:
Is this real or fake?
How did such a secretive operation get leaked?
Could the university have planted this, or at least used it, as a marketing ploy to garner fan reaction?
Naturally, we wanted to pursue this as a news story.

This was the statement issued by the OSU athletic department in response to our inquiry:
“We are aware of this and the many other designs that have been circulated online and speculated about. There is great interest from Beaver Nation in our new brand identity. We look forward to launching the new brand identity to Beaver Nation this spring.”

It’s vague and there’s no confirmation or denial of the legitimacy of the logo. We have, however, been asked multiple times why we haven’t reported on it anyway. The Oregonian, Corvallis Gazette-Times, Yahoo.com, Salem Statesman-Journal, KVAL and many others have run stories about the logo leak.

The fact is, there’s no news here — yet. There’s no response coming from the university and nothing coming from Nike, either.

The recent trend in journalism in the Information Age has been to report on anything — especially if it’s going to generate the significant interest of Oregon State fans and college football fans across the nation. The mindset for most nowadays is to be the first to report anything — even if it’s pure speculation.

Twitter has increased this approach tenfold. The University of Oregon has received NCAA violations numerous times if Twitter is a trusted source. But every time, it proves to be a hoax. What happens, though? Publications will report hearsay because if they’re the ones breaking the story, they get their names attached to the story when it goes national.

But these publications are reporting on something from a blog. There’s a good chance this is the real logo. The rebranding of the Beavers has been the worst-kept secret around the state of Oregon for a while now. According to the athletic department, the official release of the rebranding of Oregon State athletics will come in April.

Until we get concrete information from credible sources, there’s nothing to report. All we have is an Instagram photo of a T-shirt coming from a blog with no real authority.

We can’t stop newspapers with a larger readership and more accomplished writers from reporting on a leaked logo. We can, however, ask for transparency from the university. Confirm or deny the logo.

If it is the real deal — and we aren’t looking at a photoshopped image coming from someone looking for attention — then the secret is already out.

All of the money involved in the rebranding of OSU and the attention it will eventually receive makes this a question worth answering.

Until we get clarity from the university, we’re not going to report on scuttlebutt.


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