Sports as "Breaking News"

In the context of what Young Gun explained about that paper, putting the freshest news in the breaking news slot on the website is completely appropriate. I'll concur with Dick Whitman's analysis.

 

Agreed. I think people are confusing "breaking news" with "major news."

 

Post away as breaking news. I like to think of it as, at the last shop I worked at, being labeled "Latest from the newsroom." Makes more sense that way. Either way, there are always going to be people who post that comment, almost verbatim, every time you do this. Ignore them because that prep football gamer will probably be your most-read story online that day, which means it is important to your readers.

 

While results in the first week of the high school season may or may not be breaking news, I'd think the winner of the Super Bowl definitely qualifies. The example posted by OP sounds like one of the regular suspects who live to complain.

 

Poor label on the part of your company, but I'll agree with the chorus in that Friday night football results are perfectly acceptable to post in the lead spot for the website. In most communities, I doubt there is a regular news item that really deserves to go over that spot, since the weekend is normally where you dump the "oh isn't that nice?" profiles. (Well, at least Saturday; Sunday spot you might have a real nice package or story to go with, depending on your paper's focus on audience.)

 

It is all in the community you live in and what they care about. Los Angeles, does not qualify high school or most sports as breaking news except championships like Lakers, Kings, Angels etc.

But in potluck and even Orange County, CA and the Register has a huge presence in high school football and that may quality.

The thing is, it all depends on what your readers consider important.

 

I disagree with wicked.

Isn't breaking news, by dictionary definition, anything that's happening right now? It doesn't have to be a screaming banner headline.

I believe the original poster works at a weekly where football gamers would be old news by the time they're in print. That, to me, makes them even better candidates to go live on the website.

I always post sports stories in our "top news" section, particularly now that the rest of the site is behind a paywall. Sports gets far more pageviews that way.

 

This is correct. Breaking news is whatever is happening now. Anything else is overthinking it.

 

A few years ago, we got the whole "we've got to start breaking more news online; online is the way to go; we want scores online before the TV has them at 10:30" ... so we posted game scores as breaking news, sent out the email alerts, etc.

After a few Fridays, we were told to stop. Too many complaints from little old ladies who couldn't follow instructions to un-check the box for "breaking news: sports" on their profile preference page (if they could even find that), and they didn't want all of those alerts cluttering their inbox. They couldn't find Aunti Nelda's latest spyware-infested chain letter among all the scores.

And, of course, "don't your reporters have anything better to do than follow a bunch of kids playing games."

 

If the only thing the guy has to complain about is that the gamer is slotted under a place called "Breaking News", then you're fine.

If he had something more legitimate to complain about, he would. But it's actually a good sign that he has to go this far down on the list of petty complaints to find one to be a dick about.

 

This, 100 percent.

 

I'd say anything unplanned qualifies as breaking news. I'm less inclined to say the state of the union is breaking news than a backup tight end tearing his ACL.