BEYOND THE SCOREBOARD: Improving your Sports Coverage

Ellen Austin, MJE

The Harker School San Jose, CA EllenA@harker.org

WHY FOCUS ON YOUR SPORTS COVERAGE?

�How many of you here today play a sport?� [question during my session @ Spring NSPA 2010 Convention in Portland]

BETTER SPORTS COVERAGE WILL BRING YOU….   More readers. Period.

  Readers who might otherwise not read a traditional

newspaper or magazine.

  Opportunities for your staff to develop a REAL ��news� rhythm of timely stories.

•  From a survey at Paly, 44% of student body participates in at least one sport

•  Equal or higher % at area high schools (Viking survey)

•  If roughly HALF of the students are in sports, shouldn’t your pages reflect what your audience is doing?

THE VIKING an all-sports high school magazine

•  Palo Alto High School •  Founded in 2007 •  64 pages/ 6 issues per year •  30 person staff •  Self-funded through

advertising sales •  Covers every Paly team,

specific athletes, deeper sports issues

!www.vikingsportsmag.com Since March 2011, also the first high school all-sports website

•  Updated with online-only content, as well as print edition content

•  Using this for columnists and bloggers, too

•  All print editions archived online, using ISSUU.com

THREE STEPS TO BETTER SPORTS COVERAGE

1.TREAT SPORTS AS NEWS

Get instant. Now. Tweets/social media send scores straight to your phones within minutes of the final buzzer

Twitter and Facebook: your instant scoreboard

Keep it short, keep it accurate. Get scores up within 15-20 minutes of last buzzer.

Standard game coverage:

•  200-300 word game brief and recap

•  A dominant image

•  Quotes

• Timeliness (within 24 hours of the event)

21 separate hits

676 separate hits

Teams provide daily �news� events for your publication. Aren’t you ALWAYS trying to find news? Try to COVER all home games, if possible. Use online options to get scores and briefs loaded and in the hands of your readers fast fast fast.

2. VISUALS MATTER THE DECISIVE MOMENT: action photos!

  Human brains process IMAGES much more easily and much more quickly than the complex decoding of a WORD

  In sports, the action is a true �news photo� that

conveys the story unfolding in real time

  A good photo draws the reader to your TEXT.

  Don�t believe me? So, which of these slides captures you more -- the one you�re reading now or….

…. THIS ONE?

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Brandon Dukovic]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Ali Kershner]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Anne Hildebrand]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

[photo by Allie Shorin]

Use both �traditional� photos and �art��photos to tell the story

[photo by Malaika Drebin -- her first photo shoot for Viking]

BE CREATIVE. This non-Photoshopped image, shot underwater on a spring afternoon, illustrated a cover story on athletes balancing school and sports. It was later used as cover for C:JET magazine.

[photo by Malaika Drebin]

[Photo by Allie Shorin] FIND A NEW VANTAGE POINT.

[photo by Brandon Dukovic] SHOOT DETAILS.

[photo by Ali Kershner]

LOOK FOR EMOTION.

[Photo by Allie Shorin] BE READY.

[photo by Brandon Dukovic]

BE READY. EVEN IN THE RAIN.

3. TELL BIGGER STORIES. Use sports as a �doorway�� to issues, trends, advocacy

  What are the stories athletes are anxious about?

  Sports is a window into all aspects of an athlete’s life.

  Find the �lens� through sports.

ISSUE: HAZING ON TEAMS

INTRO TO HAZING STORY [October 2008] by Peter Johnson and Noah Sneider David, a Palo Alto High School senior and varsity football player, remembers his first hazing experience, when his hands were held behind his back and his legs spread open next to a pool table. “It all happened pretty fast,” said David, who like the other students quoted in this story has had his real name withheld as a condition for speaking with The Viking. David, a sophomore JV football player two years ago, had just been called up to the varsity football team for the 2005 Central Coast Section tournament when he was hazed at an off-campus dinner. No coaches were present at the dinner, according to David.

(cont.) “Everyone surrounded me, and I got my hands held behind my head by two guys,” David said. “Another guy tried to pop the ball up [from the pool table] and hit me in the balls. It wasn’t really working. They tried five or six times and it kept hitting my belt or my leg or something. Another two upperclassmen said, ‘Well f**k this’ and they came up and hit me twice in my balls. “I had my hands behind my head, so I was in a vulnerable position already. Sometimes you feel like you can get out of the way, but there was no doing that this time. It [the punch] went low to high, so it was just right in. They hit the spot. It was the worst because it was two hits in only five seconds. After that I puked a little bit. It was like a dry heave, and I felt pretty sick the rest of the night. They stopped after I started gagging…”

ISSUE: IMPACT OF CHOICES

May 2012 A one-year story investigation of a top high school athlete’s departure from (and return to) baseball… and the choices he made along the way.

Baseball is a game of adjustments. A flyout teaches a hitter to stay on top of the ball. A walk does not discourage a pitcher from pounding the strike zone on the next at-bat, it drives him to try even harder. A baseball player is considered great for getting a hit just thirty percent of the time. Even though perfection is unreachable, every athlete from a backyard little-leaguer to a hall-of-famer strives to have a perfect season, an undefeated record and to be the best on the squad. So what happens when players step off the field? The same idea of perfection applies. The pressure to be right, the expectations to practice morality, the assumption that to be the best you can’t make mistakes. Whether it’s on or off the field, perfection is impossible. Just as an baseball player can strike out during a game, he can strike out in life. What separates a good athlete from a great athlete is not the strikeout itself, but how he reacts to it.

BACK IN THE BOX by Jacob Lauing and Sam Borsos

CONCUSSIONS: an important issue that every school should be covering now

Huge injury numbers, plus a culture of silence and athletes who won’t admit to concussions

SILENT IMPACT by Jon Dickerson, Nathan Norimoto, and Mariah Philips Imagine your body being slammed into artificial turf by a 200 pound linebacker wearing a helmet with padding as hard as wood. Imagine your head smacking the ground, then whipping back into place, all in under a second. Ask Palo Alto High School offensive tackle Michael Lyzwa (’12) how it feels. Actually, ask the players on the sidelines, because Lyzwa will not remember; he suffered a concussion. “I just remember being in one play and then things just started going bad,” Lyzwa said. “I couldn’t open my eyes, I felt really light headed.” In between the lines of the patchy story Lyzwa tells lies the scary reality that his teammates witnessed during that late August practice at Paly.

(cont.) Lyzwa was unable to speak fluidly, open his eyes or recognize his teammates after his concussion. He could not stand on his own, and had to be propped up. No matter how many times Lyzwa hears the story, he will not remember this occurrence, which became a red flag to all who witnessed it. THE WORD CONCUSSION derives from the Latin word “concutere,” which literally means “to shake violently.” A force to the head can cause the brain to move around inside the skull. This shaking can cause bruises, nerve injuries and blood vessel damage, resulting in memory loss, and in the most severe cases, death. “The symptoms [I got after my concussion] lasted for a few days,” Lyzwa said. “I was feeling really [bad], sensitive to light and sound, [my] reaction time was really slow. I had on and off headaches.”

  MORE ON CONCUSSIONS: Read the New York Times piece from Sept. 15, 2007 for great info – this is the piece that started the NFL attention to concussions.

  Remember: cite and attribute if you use it!

CONCUSSIONS

“HOW DO WE DO THIS?” Planning a more comprehensive strategy for your staff’s sports coverage

ANYWHERE CAN BE YOUR NEWSROOM

DURING THE GAME

•  Liveblog, tweet, video, Facebook

•  Action pictures

DURING THE GAME

DURING THE GAME facebook.com/thevikingmag

Cross-staff collaboration with INfocus broadcast video clips uploaded to liveblog

One subjective + objective camera

DURING THE GAME

UPDATE YOUR AUDIENCE

•  Link your liveblog

•  Filter through Facebook!

AFTER THE GAME

•  Link your

stories everywhere!

Timely (< 24 hours) 200-300 words Dominant image Quotes

ONLINE RECAP VIKINGSPORTSMAG.COM

AFTER THE GAME:

Video clips

Social media links

AFTER THE GAME

Watch your competition’s coverage

AFTER THE GAME

POST GAME VIDEO

Music video to "All I Do Is Win" and "Don't Stop Believin'"

AFTER THE GAME:

AFTER THE GAME: PRINT

AFTER THE GAME: PRINT •  "Golden Thread"

•  Should flow like a story

•  Appeals to community

•  Design

AFTER THE GAME - PRINT

AFTER THE GAME - PRINT

DON'T MISS THE MOMENT

vikingsportsmag.com

 BONUS: Go there for a shareable Prezi on how to shoot great sports photos!  Contact info:

Ellen Austin EllenA@Harker.org