So, you’re a Boston Red Sox fan. The only thing that matters in your world in the morning is finding out fast, to the point and in an attractive, entertaining fashion how the Red Sox fared against the dreaded New York Yankees last night.
Not only that, you want to know what it means moving forward. On top of that, you wouldn’t mind an opportunity to put your two cents worth into the conversation.
Is it possible to create a multi-media platform in today’s world that can take national material that’s good for the masses and package it in a way that is personalized to a specific reader’s wants and desires?
Does the technology exist to do the same on a local level? Is it possible to create an environment where the reader can dictate to editors how stories are played on the cover of their online sports platform?
Forget the mobile phone apps where text messages deliver your favorite team’s score in a timely fashion. In a fast-paced, ever-changing media landscape, personalizing sports coverage for audiences is one of two important challenges facing media outlets today.
“Just having content is not enough,” said Sporting News president/publisher Jeff Price while presiding over a workshop at the Associated Press Sports Editor’s Summer Conference in Boston, Friday. “Content today has to be personalized and turned into a social experience.”
The title of the workshop: Building a winning tablet strategy – the Sporting News case history, was led by Price and included panelists Paul Kasko, managing editor-digital, Sporting News, and Mark Conley, digital sports editor, San Jose Mercury News.
With millions of iPads flying off the shelves and competitors such as Samsung, Blackberry, Dell and others lining up to build the next great tablet, consumers are adopting tablet devices quicker than any technological device in history.
In September, Sporting News will launch a free tablet that Price says will be comprehensive in scope with high-quality and timely content that will be personalized to the individual subscriber with the help of surveys and the likes of Facebook.
At the Mercury News, Conley is part of a team of 13 Bay area papers that launched a combined, comprehensive tablet strategy four months ago.
The numbers are staggering: iPads in the U.S. today total 8.5 million. According to AdMob, that number is expected to explode to 25 million by the end of this year. Additional research indicates 38 percent of tablet users spend more than two hours per day – mostly at home – on the device; another 30 percent one-to-two hours per day.
“I see the tablet as the second coming of the P.M. paper,” said Conley. “The journalist in the 21st century that is not on Twitter, not on Facebook, not engaged with his/her audience is worthless.”
Sporting News, under the direction of Kasko and newly hired editor-in-chief Garry D. Howard, met with the seven topics editors and 18 reporters in Charlotte, NC, to get everyone on the same page in preparation for September’s launch.
In recent years, Sporting News reporters have been part of an evolution of change much like other publications across the country.
“Reporters who were once used to writing one story a week, were told we were going to a daily product, then that we would be reporting in live time, that we were adding social media and video,” Kasko said.
Change like that doesn’t happen overnight.
“Stories are no longer more than 700 words. Again, we’ve become all-inclusive in the digital age. People don’t want to read a long story online. They want to be engaged,” Kasko said.
The end result is Sporting News.me. A constantly changing multi-media platform, created with each individual sports fan in mind.
Will it work?
“We’ve seen a shift in advertising that has gone from 80 percent print/20 percent digital to 67 percent digital/33 percent print,” Price said. “The same creativity and applications devoted to content also applies to advertisers. They, too, can engage audiences.”
The ability to bring soccer news to MLS fans front and center, the capability to take a Boston baseball game and put it on the cover of that same online platform for a separate reader is a sports fan’s paradise, indeed.
The key, said Price, “is to think of your publication, not as a newspaper, not as a magazine, but as a brand, reaching across several platforms.”
Concluding with some do’s and don’ts regarding newspaper tablet apps, Conley pointed out the following:
— Do take a good look around at others
— Do remember that “cool” has a shelf-life
— Do realize the important parts of your mission
— Don’t try to recreate print
— Don’t try to be something you're not
— Don’t forget to have fun along the way
Jeff Kuehn is the sports editor at the Oakland Press.
