Sports as "Breaking News"

After last night's week one football game, I wrote the gamer and posted it online. I posted the story as "Breaking News" on the site because it's the first story listed. I work at a weekly paper and we are published on Thursday. I pitched the idea of running weekly "previews" focusing on players who don't score a lot of points for our print edition which runs 5-6 days following the previous week's games and doing a "roundup" of sorts for those games to mention the skill players.

I do, however, like to have news on our website as quickly as possible. There are two other papers who cover these same schools and both are daily papers. By the time I would be able to print a gamer, who gives a shit about it except the momma of the kids who scored?

I get a comment from a reader stating, "It is sad when a reporter feels the score of a ball game is Breaking News ... kind of a joke to the paper."

Is it a joke or am I right to think I'm doing my readers a service by posting these gamers the night of the contest? I am 99% percent sure it's okay to continue this, but I guess that comment sort of threw me off.

 

Don't give one more second of thought to it. There is a contingent of readers out there, a vocal minority, that gets their hackles raised when sports is treated as news. They used to call when sports stories ran on A1. Like clockwork. Now they've moved onto this. Pay them absolutely no mind.

 

What he said. A live gamer is certainly breaking news.

 

The definition of breaking news has certainly been stretched in recent years.

Using a national audience to offer some context: 9/11 is breaking news. Gadhafi croaking is breaking news. Obama signing a nondescript bill on the East Lawn is not breaking news.

Just because something is happening now does not mean it's "breaking news."

As an aside, if your website is designed so that the top story must be a breaking news element ... bad planning. You should have multiple layout/design options.

 

Our website's breaking news setup is terrible, with the most inane things that come across the wire getting posted automatically. I think. Makes no sense to me. But to me, a live football game, provided there is interest in preps at this paper, is breaking news.

 

The result of a planned sporting event is not breaking news to me. I'm certainly fine with posting it immediately after the game, but it's not breaking news.

 

PC puts it much better than I did.

 

I agree with PCLoadLetter/wicked.
I don't even think the user was degrading your work, just he/she didn't feel a sporting event without the extraordinary was considered breaking news.

 

Depends how the web site is set up and what else is happening at the time. Some sites treat anything that is happening now as breaking news, and others have numerous places to list stories. On our site, this would be listed as breaking news under the main panel, which highlights the top five stories of the day with photos. All just depends on the setup. But to me, if people in your area are interested in the result, it should be easy to find on the site right after the game is over.

 

I think you could reply, "Considering we get 23 calls a night asking for the score, this is breaking to some."

 

Lance Armstrong stripped of his seven tour titles is 'Breaking News' not the Cardinals QB situation.

 

Agreed. Unless you happen to be in Arizona.