Tweets on Deck Moving beyond traditional models of sports coverage Avery Holton, Ph.D. Student, University of Texas at 2011 UT ASNE Institute University of Texas at Austin

Tweets on Deck The state of sports media Creative coverage concepts Social media and why it matters Story telling Beyond game coverage Making the most of sports coverage

Before We Dive In

State of Sports Media

Twitter by the numbers: Needed nearly three years to reach 1 billion tweets Averaging more than 1 billion tweets per week More than 200 million users Projected to continue upward trend Twitter users 3x more likely to actively seek and participate in news Now a primary source of breaking and sharing news

*Every 10 minutes or so: -200,000 unique videos hit YouTube -300,000 tweets are tweeted -690,000 messages are Facebooked -Google processes 2,000,000 queries - 9,500+ new users sign onto SNS * News organizations use SNS to break news, share news, recycle news, search for sources, and engage in non-traditional practices such as offering opinions and humor, talking about work, and reposting user information as news. State of Sports Media

Creative Coverage Concepts

“Ambient journalism is part of a trend towards news becoming ever more ingrained in the everyday flow of experience of users. In this context, news is omnipresent in the form of unstructured data, coming in fragments of raw, unprocessed journalism. This marks a change from the traditional bundling of news into professionally edited fixed products such as the print newspaper. News shifts from being a product to a process, involving both journalists and users.” -Alfred Hermida, Reportr.net

*Stay traditional, restrictive, and professional (stagnation) *Engage readers with caution (dehumanize) *Break news on the web, not Twitter (desocialize) Creative Coverage Concepts

Why It Matters Traditional High School Models Few issues, few content All print-based Old News Current Real World Models High issues, high content Multiple media platforms Fully updated

Why It Matters Students need early exposure to social media as a reporting tool. Print-only editions extremely limit students’ ability to function as reporters. Social media gives students the power to break news, share new information, link and promote work, and get their voices into the media mix. Not without drawbacks.

Making It Work Sustainability and the Single Employee

Making It Work

Interactive 1 The A.D. Goes Ape

Interactive 1 The athletic director of your school announces to the media she’s holding a press conference at 5 p.m. for a major announcement regarding your school’s sports budget. Because this is a major news event that could impact your school at a number of levels, you assemble your student reporters and prepare to cover the press conference. So, how do you approach the press conference?

Interactive 1 Who do you assign to cover the press conference? How can reporters use social media to report the press conference? What if social media isn’t an option? How can a reporter break news, contextualize the news, and keep that news in the conversation for your publication? What are possible drawbacks?

Storytelling Even with social media, context is still important. Even in sports, there are stories that connect Questions students should ask: Why is this story important? Who will this story impact? Who can best tell this story? What’s the best medium to tell this story through? How can I let people know about this story?

Storytelling Who cares about one season?

Storytelling Who cares about one game?

Storytelling Who cares about one second?

Storytelling What happened before this game? Who made this journey possible? What are the implications of this game? Where will this game play in history? How will this game change other games? Why should anyone read this story? Why should this story resonate in peoples’ minds?

The Man Who Tweeted the

So News Is All Around Us “Ambient journalism is part of a trend towards news becoming ever more ingrained in the everyday flow of experience of users. In this context, news is omnipresent in the form of unstructured data, coming in fragments of raw, unprocessed journalism. This marks a change from the traditional bundling of news into professionally edited fixed products such as the print newspaper. News shifts from being a product to a process, involving both journalists and users.” -Alfred Hermida, Reportr.net

News Approaches Must Change *More socialization and information surplus than ever before (Google would need 57,448 to index all of the information currently online). *More people turning to lightweight mobile devices to connect to the news (An average of 7 mobile devices per person by 2020). *More people reporting feeling overloaded with the amount of information they encounter daily.

Digitize, Socialize, Functionalize *Media presentations should fit the medium. *Media should work beyond the restraints of traditional norms and practices. *Aggregation is great, but personalized and automated aggregation could provide a more useful tool. *News can become a more functional part of people’s lives by understanding people as less consumer and more, well, people.

Digitize, Socialize, Functionalize

The Man Who Tweeted the World *Socialization is an opportunity to: - Understand consumers as people - Find trends in context and habits - Reduce information overload by personalized aggregation - Approach new reporting techniques -Actively experiment - Engage people

The Future of International Reporting Experimenting with citizen journalism, social media, and non-