It's not every day that a top-25 men's basketball team rolls into Glens Falls, N.Y., for a game.
The homecoming of Jimmer Fredette, whose Brigham Young Cougars beat Vermont 86-58 on Dec. 8, meant some extra effort for the sports staff of the Glens Falls Post-Star.
"We basically stopped everything for this game," sports editor Greg Brownell said. "We had been planning for it since early in the fall and started chasing preview stories a couple of weeks before the game."
The paper's website has a section devoted to Fredette (http://poststar.com/sports/basketball/jimmer/), which includes coverage from the game and a column by editor Ken Tingley.
The sports department produced wraps for the A section on the day of and the day after the game, with advertising spots on all four pages both days. Extra coverage was included in the regular sports section both days.
Click here to see the pdf for the Dec. 8 preview.
"Wrapping the A section provided us with a design challenge," Brownell said. "Bumping up the A section for the wrap meant a 10-page sports section for the preview, and there wasn't much going on besides the BYU game. … We filled the extra sports pages by scheduling our high school football all-star page and our boys basketball preview to run that day.
"On the night of the game, everyone on my staff except the copy editor and myself were at the Civic Center at one time or another. Yes, we blew deadline. By a lot."
The sports department produced some online features and video, but Brownell said he saw the game as a "print-oriented event."
"There are a million places to get online information about NCAA basketball games, and it didn't make sense to go head-to-head with that," he said. "I wanted to kick (butt) at the newsstand, and i think we did."
ATLANTIC COAST
The Bristol Herald Courier
The sports and photo staff won a Media General MegaAward for Best Innovation (community/small market) for the paper's “mobile digital newsroom.”
During the Irwin Tools Night Race at Bristol Motor Speedway in August, the Bristol Herald Courier sports staff took its newsroom to the speedway’s media room. Through the use of Twitter, Facebook and the paper's website, the staff posted breaking news from the event and posted almost-live photos to its website and social media feeds. The staff had two photo galleries posted and constantly updated each day on TriCities.com. The lead story on the front page of Tri-Cities.com changed three times each day as sports editor Jim Sacco ran the “digital desk” from the media room while also filing columns and Twitter updates from driver interviews throughout the week. Photos were e-mailed to Sacco by the photographers all week on-site; and Sacco would disseminate them via Twitter and Facebook. Reporters Nate Hubbard and Allen Gregory also filed constant Twitter updates (retweeted by Sacco) as they broke news and did mid-day notebooks.
Seeing the success of the “mobile digital newsroom,” the sports staff carried it into high school football. Significant growth in Twitter followers took place through the fall, and those followers became a source of “unofficial” score reports from around the region — most done on a quarter-by-quarter basis, others done almost on play-by-play from readers.
The BHC developed “hashtags” for each of the local sports with high school football (#HCFH) leading the charge and developing the score updates from fans.
Every Friday, the sports staff ran its “Friday Night Tweetdown,” in which the three beat writers posted two in-depth questions looking for readers' responses. The “Tweetdown” was published in the Friday paper to encourage people who didn’t have Twitter to sign up and follow so they could get the whole story and interact with the sports staff. For big games, the “mobile digital newsroom” took to the football fields.
GREAT LAKES
The Chicago Tribune
The sports section recapped the year in sports with "10 for ’10."
At the close of 2009, the Tribune did a best of the 2000s, and before that, it published recaps from individual reporters called “My year.”
Sports editor Mike Kellams was looking for a way to review the year while using less space.
"We sent the categories out to each writer at the beginning of December and gave them a week or so to compile their best offerings," he said. "We culled it down in the office to the 10 best per day."
The Tribune's list of top 10s in 10 categories took up a little more than half of the section's back page ("the last row") and included: best and worst games, best and worst decisions, unsung MVPs, heralded MVPs, best quotes, most eccentric, most powerful and hoping to see in '11.
Willoughby (Ohio) News-Herald
The sports department finished the year with a number of projects, including one analyzing the "Golden age of Ohio State football."
With the Buckeyes winning their sixth straight Big Ten title, duplicating their run from 1972 to 1977, the paper compared the Tressel era (2001-present) to Woody Hayes' best stretch, from 1968 to 1977.
"It’s amazing how close a lot of the categories are," sports editor Mark Podolski said. "We compared Big Ten titles, bowl record, record vs. ranked opponents, All-Americans, all Big-Ten players, top-five finishes, NFL first-round picks and weeks ranked No. 1 in AP poll."
After crunching the numbers, Podolski met with his OSU football beat writer, John Kampf, and they decided to best way to settle it was dueling columns.
Kampf took the side of Hayes, and Podolski took the side of Tressel. Lead designer Howard Primer put together a graphic of a gold Buckeye helmet with Archie Griffin on one side and Troy Smith on the other.
The paper recapped the year for the major beats — Cavaliers, Browns, Indians — by having the reporters write about their top memories, criticisms, reflections in a point-by-point format that covered LeBron James’ "Decision," Eric Mangini’s job, the passing of Bob Feller and the local Indians Class A affiliate winning a championship.
For the high school review, Primer produced a collage of cutout photos (39 last year) as the anchor of package. The collage runs out front as a promo to the main spread inside, which takes up almost two full broadsheet pages. Categories include: Memorable photos, top-10 stories, top performances of the year, a wish list for the next year, fearless predictions, storylines to watch In 2011, and now it can be told (funny behind-the-scenes stuff).
"It’s a collective effort of the four high school sports writers," Podolski said, "and one of the most popular things we do all year.
GREAT PLAINS
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
The sports staff produced three special sections to end the year: Ten years of Albert Pujols in October, Stan Musial at 90 in November and the All-Metro 2010 in December. The All-Metro special section was the first time the paper combined its regional high school teams from fall sports into one section.
All three sections were pitched to advertisers and met with varying degrees of success, according to sports editor Reid Laymance. The Pujols and Musial sections made money, but the high school section was closer to break even, he said.
Photographer Chris Lee produced the artwork.
See pages from the high school section:
Cover
Cross country
Field hockey
Swimming/volleyball
Football 1
Football 2
Golf/tennis
Soccer
Softball
