Interactive examples

Multimedia coverage of sporting events

In this week’s edition of II’s summer guest blogger series Brian Vernellis, former sports producer at The Times in Shreveport, La., discusses the importance of integrating multimedia elements into traditional sports coverage, and highlights specific examples of successful sports packages.

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Multimedia and videos have a prime opportunity to attract readers to a paper’s Web site, and it should be the sports department leading the charge. It’s surprising how few newspapers take advantage of videos when it comes to sports. Fortunately, my former sports editor at The Times in Shreveport, La., understood the full impact videos and multimedia have when it comes to driving traffic to the Web site.

Sure, the size of the event will dictate the time and energy devoted to it, but even for something like the opening day of the local little league, a simple two- to three-minute stand-alone video is perfect. Community/local sports fill this need for videos nicely. Parents gobble these kinds of videos up. Swim meets, charity golf tournaments, the start of the minor league baseball team’s season, anything to seize the local beats as the prime target of newspapers.

Above all else though, prep sports should be the mission of the majority of newspapers, especially for those in mid-major markets. Yes, covering pro and college athletics is important, but when readers can find out if the Steelers beat the Cowboys on Monday Night Football from so many other Web sites, sports pages have to provide that content they can’t get from ESPN or TV.

The Times produces three weekly high school shows – a game of the week, a city game of the week and an area game of the week. The goal was to create a SportsCenter style of show for readers – two talking heads (asst. SE, high school writer), a couple of coaches’ interviews and b-roll. Voila.

The trick is keeping those videos under four minutes. Talking heads have a tendency to ramble, so any insight has got to be quick and precise. It’s amazing the response those videos generate. You’re beating local TV with your extended prep coverage, which makes it all that much easier to sell to advertisers too.

Flash can provide another piece of the puzzle for sports pages. Here is something that caught my eye during the football season. It’s a terrific Flash project from the New Orleans Times-Picayune that charts the progress of New Orleans Saints quarterback Drew Brees.

Great clean look (it integrates the Saints’ black and gold colors), easy to digest the facts and it gives fans what they want in a clear fashion.
This is perfect over the course of the season. Flash projects don’t have to be elaborate to entice readers. The best thing about this one is fans will be coming back to check on Brees’ stats through the course of the season.

All-city and all-area teams are the first thing to come to mind for a Flash project. This project from the Lansing State Journal is a great template for an interactive all-city/all-area team.

It’s major events, like the Super Bowl, the World Series, NBA championships, major PGA events, that interactive media for sports can really shine. Case in point: The St. Petersburg Times did a phenomenal job with its coverage of Super Bowl XLIII. Obviously, game action is limited to photographs, but if there was a press event or side event the SPT was there shooting it. They even teamed with legendary announcer Pat Summerall for a cool slideshow, asking fans to rank the 25 most memorable moments in Super Bowl history.

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Brian Vernellis worked as a sports writer in Michigan and Louisiana for 12 years, covering everything from Little League baseball to a couple of Ryder Cups to LSU’s march to the 2003 BCS national championship. He is currently pursuing his Masters degree in digital media from Michigan State and a freelance videographer/sports writer. You can find him on WiredJournalists and LinkedIn.

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• Multimedia must see: Cisco Systems’ “You are the boss”
• Mindstorming, a truly interactive video experience

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