Category: Social media

Playoffs are around the corner: Here are some ideas for improving your sports coverage

Post author By Robert Bohler
Post date October 30, 2017

With the high school football playoffs almost on us and prep basketball about to tip off, now is about as good a time as any to consider again about how to beef up your online sports readership.

And while it may seem sometimes you’re having to rob Peter to pay Paul when it comes to developing your online presence or preserving your established print product, here are some digital strategies that with the resources you probably already have can help you make inroads to both. Think of it as having your cake and eating it, too.

Reinvent your game coverage

First thing, consider using your social media coverage as your mainstay on game night. Weeknights or weekends, your readers are going to be coming and going, and whether they’re at the game, on the road, or partying down, you can keep them engaged with your social media coverage of the games. Some suggestions:

●Don’t do play by play. If they’re at the game, they saw it. If they’re at home, they may be listening to radio. If they’re partying or waiting on their spouse to finish paying the tab somewhere, PxP may not grab their attention.
●Do think analysis and context: Give them what they can’t always get from watching live or listening, much less waiting in line somewhere. Make your observations significant. Think of your role as that of a radio analyst, and give them what your competitor may not be able to: if the girls’ point guard just made a nifty pass for an assist, or the receiver had to outleap a defender to snag a pass, tell your reader “Lindsay Baskins’ threads a pass to Ashley Robbins for a layup. Lady Tartars up 42-30 at 2:13 in the 1^st QTR,” or “’Dillas’ Ray Renfro outleaps a defender for a 15-yard gain to the Wampus Cat 10-yd line, ‘Dillas up 10-7 late in the third.” Or tell us the coach is getting heated, stamping her foot or throwing his towel after having to bench a player for foul trouble or a holding penalty negates a gain. That’s detail the broadcast may miss, and it’s stuff many radio competitors won’t or can’t deliver anyway in a stream. Make it worthwhile for your reader to follow.
●Do get the greatest saturation by combining some social media platforms. Most of your readers have Facebook; fewer use Twitter, but those that do will likely rely more on it that Facebook. And you can do both simultaneously by combining your accounts so that what you post to Twitter pops up in your Facebook posts. A tip: choose the Twitter-dominant route so that your posts will be short and sweet, and there are likely other social media combinations you can explore. Here’s a how-to link for posting Twitter to Facebook: https://support.twitter.com/articles/31113
●Do have the final score ready immediately at game’s end, along with some context – “The ‘Dillas 27-24 win over Itasca puts them at 10-1 and headed to the first round of playoffs against Cairo or Attapulgus on Nov. 12.” You might even mention – briefly- who the star player was, but that’s all you need. Click “send,” head for sidelines or locker room for post-game interviews, and then head to the house to cool your heels. Yes, take a break. Here’s why:
●Don’t worry about publishing a late-night or next-day story online. Readers who haven’t listened can go online and find the score, your summary, and the important stuff in your social media thread. And tell them to be looking for additional coverage

The game story: Out with the old, in with the new

For most weekly, twice-weekly or bi-weekly newspapers, your publication cycle won’t dovetail smoothly with traditional game story coverage. Worst case scenario, your paper hits the news racks or the front lawn smack dab in the middle and you’re faced with the prospect of publishing an account that’s days old when its hot off the presses. That’s still a must read for parents and grandparents but the interest from many of your readers will be fading. So what’s a body to do? Ask a staff that’s already stretched thin to write multiple accounts? That doesn’t go over so well, so here’s a modest proposal:

●Take a features approach to your published game story, and hold its posting until the evening before or the day of distribution. After you post the social media accounts, let them stand as your first-day coverage for those catching up.
●Focus your print coverage on a features approach that includes players’ and coaches’ reactions, how they’ll incorporate what they did or didn’t accomplish into the next contest, or, if the season’s over, how they reflect on how it’s all come down.
●Do think features, not news, with alternative ledes that tease the reader and play down the time lag between the timing of the event and your coverage of it.
●Use your previous social media coverage as a tool in constructing your story. In it you’ve already got a timeline of sorts. Once you work the most significant pics or stats from the previous game into developing story, you’ve summarized what happened a few days ago and also offered readers a fresh slant. If you’re fortunate, you’ll have the opportunity to use that approach for a great advance story for the upcoming contest.
●Make that story your sports centerpiece and post it online to coincide with the print edition. You can generate additional buzz by posting it the evening before distribution.
●Do make sure you continue to promote that coverage through your social media and house ads in the paper.

Old news can be good news

If you’ve got a digital whiz in your shop, you can use your old digital files to your advantage by hyperlinking to previous coverage that allows readers to pursue their interests and beef up your readership.

●If you’re telling a story about the season’s highs and lows, provide hyperlinks that allow readers who missed the earlier stories to pursue them.
●If the ‘Dillas’ Renfro, who earlier outleaped that defender for the 15-yard gain, has been highlighted in previous games, give digital readers a link to that story and embed the link in his name, which should be highlighted: “Renfro outleaped a defender for a 15-yeard gain late in the third to keep the Dillas’ drive alive.” If you’re talking playoff prospects, and the ‘Dillas have already played Attapulgus, give readers their rein to revisit that game: “The ‘Dillas 27-24 win over Itasca puts them at 10-1 and headed to the first round of playoffs against Cairo or Attapulgus, which they defeated earlier in the season, on Nov. 12.”
●Be sure, if their opponent has been determined by press time, to update the story, but that extra reporting should be minimal.

In the end, you’ve got limited resources but greater expectations by contemporary readers, particularly younger ones you want to engage for the long haul, and many of whom expect or will appreciate timely and convenient coverage. These strategies will require some newspapers to re-think and alter their traditional approaches, and one size definitely doesn’t fit all. But these are steps that can help you attract emerging audiences with the resources you already have on hand.

Social media

Social media is not a ‘private playground’ for journalists; newspapers need social media policies

Post author By Kathryn Jones Malone
Post date September 15, 2016

Social media give journalists an audience bigger than they ever dreamed of. You work for a paper with a circulation of 4,000? On social media, your audience can number in the hundreds of thousands … or more.

Then why do so many journalists treat social media like a private space in which they can say what they want?

We look forward to linking to our stories on Facebook or tweeting about them on Twitter, knowing that this can significantly increase our audience. But journalists who posted on social media to reach more readers often run personal opinion up the social media flagpole as if they thought only their close friends would see it.

And things we would never write about for our audience of 4,000 seem fair game to write about for a potential audience many times that large.

Go figure.

This week a Newsweek political reporter tweeted “I believe Trump was institutionalized in a mental hospital for a nervous breakdown in 1990, which is why he won’t release medical records.” He had no evidence. And note the first two words: “I believe….”

Journalism has always been about what we know to be factual, what we have multiple sources to confirm. But for some reason, some people throw our time-honored standards out the window when they log on to Facebook or Twitter.

The reason this reporter (no novice, by the way – he has worked for the New York Times and Vanity Fair) wrote that as a tweet instead of a breaking news story is that an editor would have said, “Where are your sources for this? We can’t run speculation as news!”

But there are no editors on Twitter. Write it, keep it to 140 characters, and hit the “Tweet” button.

This is becoming all-too-common in journalism. Reporters have expressed opinions about their stories and their sources and have shared personal information about themselves which can call their fairness into question. And they have engaged in nasty social media wars with readers and news sources.

So is this an example of technology outpacing media ethics and standards? Not exactly. Most media have policies on this type of activity (and if your paper doesn’t, you need to work on one immediately). For instance:

●The New York Times standards editor wrote this to Times employees in 2012: “We should always treat Twitter, Facebook and other social media platforms as public activities. . . . Civility applies whether an exchange takes place in person, by telephone, by letter or online.”
●Reuters’ policy states: “If we want to tweet or post about a school play, a film or a favorite recipe, we are free to do so. When dealing with matters of public importance and actual or potential subjects of coverage, however, Reuters journalists should be mindful of the impact their publicly expressed opinions can have on their work and on Reuters.”
●NPR sums up the reason for such policies: “Everything you say or do in a social media environment is effectively a public statement from an NPR journalist.”

Earlier this month, the standards editor of the New York Times summarized why this is such an important issue: “While you may think of your Facebook page or other social-media platforms as a private area completely separate from your Times role, in fact everything we post online is to some degree public — and everything we do in public is likely to be associated with The Times.”

Social media are a place where we can let our hair down – share personal information, show photos of the great meal we just had, post our cute dog/cat/baby photos, sound off about the poor customer service we just received on our last flight, and talk about our pet peeves. Unless, of course, you’re a journalist. And that’s where our public trust has to be taken into account.

All Americans, for instance, have the right to put a political bumper sticker – or lots of them – on their cars. But as journalists, we know we must limit that free speech right in the interests of our audience, so that people don’t perceive us as biased. We know that we could keep our bumper allegiances out of our stories, but our readers may view what we write with suspicion. And the same thing goes for expressions of opinion on social media.

AP’s social media policy addresses that issue: “Sometimes AP staffers ask if they’re free to comment in social media on matters like sports and entertainment. The answer is yes, but there are some important things to keep in mind: First, trash-talking about anyone (including a team, company or celebrity) reflects badly on staffers and the AP. Assume your tweet will be seen by the target of your comment. The person or organization you’re deriding may be one that an AP colleague is trying to develop as a source.”

If you’re looking for some help in beginning to establish your paper’s social media policy, a good place to begin is with the American Society of News Editors’ 10 Best Practices for Social Media. Along with some of the links in this blogpost, that should give you some good background for writing your own newspaper policy on social media for employees.

Perhaps you’ve never encountered a problem with an employee’s social media posts. Count yourself lucky. Many people have an unfortunate predisposition to think of their posts as a private playground instead of the world’s most public stage. So don’t wait until your newspaper is facing a social media firestorm to implement a policy.