Prep Sports Nation?

Just got this in my email inbox today ... sounds like a MySpace with a prep sports focus ... I thought about forwarding to my publisher but then I thought he may never hire another reporter again, instead relying on folks posting stories and pictures on this site that we would have to use (see bolded paragraph)...


Prep Sports Scoring Points

By Marcelo Duran; Associate Editor

Newspapers & Technology; May 2008

If you build it, they will come. That is the Dell Sports goal as they attempt to extend community journalism into the wide world of sports. Dell Sports Inc. plans to roll out a national high-school sports service this fall, according to Terry Dell, president of the Charlotte, N.C., firm. The service, Prep Sports Nation, allows participants to post and share pictures, upload video and blogs and share content among students, parents, athletes and local community members.

“How cool would it be to have pictures of you, uploaded on the Web site, by everyone

in the audience?” Dell said. “It’s a game of a thousand angles and it’s easy for anyone

who goes and watches the game to take pictures.”

<B>Dell said participating newspapers can download all the materials they need from the

PSN site. Fans are reminded that a newspaper could use their photos or stories

before they can post to PSN, Dell said.</b>

Prep Sports Nation began beta testing the app last August and Dell said he’s modified

PSN to accommodate user requests. Reverse publishing “One suggestion was full reverse publishing on all user photos and profile material, which we had, but (the paper) wanted to take the entire profile and feature a particular a student,” he said.

Papers can feature multiple student profiles and can also run fan profiles from multiple

schools, he said.

PSN is engineered to manage rosters, schedules, and individual and team stats.

Users will also be able to search for particular teams or individuals on other PSN sites

and Dell said he’s working on a delivery method to allow photos and other materials to

be shared among newspapers.

The system includes a stamp or watermark that identifies where the photo originated

and a transmission system that can route the photo to a newspaper that requests to

publish it.

Prep Sports Nation arrives as newspapers try to find ways to increase coverage of local sports even as their resources are trimmed. The Amarillo (Texas) Globe-News, for example, won a Digital Edge award for its prep sports site, Pigskin Review, which launched last year (see Newspapers & Technology, March 2008).

To request more information or a demonstration of the site, contact:

Terry Dell; President

Dell Sports Inc.

terry@dellsports.com

Dell Sports Inc.

4711 Nations Crossing Rd.

Charlotte, NC 28217

 

I got it, too. I deleted it.

 

Is this intended to supplement the paper's coverage or to replace it?

 

I've gotten that e-mail 3 times now.
Delete, delete, delete

 

This thing sounds like another in the list of "user-generated" sports sites.

http://www.highschoolplaybook.com/
http://www.hsgametime.com/
http://www.digitalsports.com/

And you can toss stuff like Takkle and MaxPreps in here too. We can't get high school football coaches to call in their stats, much less get anyone to supply Web content for free. Sounds nice in theory, but the prep sports market is way too fragmented for anything like this to really work.

 

There are potential problems galore if the intent is to replace, partially or wholly, the need to have people call in games or pay reporters/stringers to cover games, from misspelled names of players to false boxscores being posted online (remember the uproar with the Boston-area high school hockey coaches?).

Sadly, I don't expect newspaper chains to hit delete, delete, delete when they see something like this. I expect them to think $ave, $ave, $ave.

 

A "stirring" example of community journalism:

http://www.digitalsports.com/Asset/type/organization/typeid/0/id/975271.aspx

 

uh,

 

this is my fear, too ... my boss did get this and forwarded it to me just now, which i deleted ...

i pray it doesn't come to this ... uh, uh, uh .... but it seems for many publishers as long as there are words and headlines and pictures in the ever-shrinking news hole, it doesn't really matter what they say ...

 

The first half of the video was fawning between the 1,001 uhs that were uttered, and a guest appearance from the player's coach. The second half was a more conventional interview, without the fawning and incessant uhs.

 

And get ready for yet another one, too.
AthletixNation.com is about to try to go national with the same type of thing. I've spoken with their CEO a few times, and he is certainly unclear of what newspapers and journalistic Web sites do. He believes we just want to lay people off and use photos and stories from the fans -- since, in his words, "the fans often know more than reporters, and there's more of them."
This CEO, while a nice guy, is convinced that he's going to replace old-fashioned journalism with a fancy site. Needless to say, I won't be doing business with him.

 

I'm speechless.