Hopefully the blog has given a bit of an insight as to how football coverage is changing because of the web. I think it’s interesting how some organisations such as The Guardian, and the BBC seem to be embracing the rise of the Web and are introducing new, innovative ways of providing their content, whereas some organisations, naming no names, seem to be firmly stuck in Web 1.0 land, simply using the Web as a front to present old fashioned coverage.

My career aims have definitely changed in the last year or so as a result of becoming more and more interested in the Web. I’d still love to be a football reporter, but I’d love to combine that role with the emerging online technologies. I think, in fact, that the Web will play an increasingly crucial role in the coverage of football and it will be necessary to have a combined skills set of traditional reporting and more contemporary ideas.

The Twitter platform definitely works well for this method of reporting. Not only is it an easy way of constantly updating, the direct message and @ functionality of Twitter made it easy for followers to easily contact me during the ‘coverage’ and so it was possible to create a more interactive event.

In terms of reaction to the match, there is an abundant amount of coverage on the Web; not just for this match but for every Premier League match played.

The BBC include videos from both of the managers, as well as their report; The Guardian supply plenty of stats to supplement their report, as well as providing a technical analysis from David Pleat and, as mentioned in previous posts, the chalkboard function can provide some excellent data – check out my effort which shows just how effective Cesc Fabregas’ passing was yesterday.

The Premier League has sold highlights packages to numerous websites as well, so if you didn’t see the game you can still catch up with the action, legally.

Special mention must also go the, otherwise pretty average, ESPN website, whose post match coverage is extremely detailed. Their match reports might not be up to much, but their statistics and their Match Action function is almost as good as The Guardian’s chalkboards.

The Heat Map function, in particular, is very impressive. It displays where a selected player has been involved in the play. The colour depends on the player touching the ball in specific areas with darker areas representing more touches. Areas without any shading are where the player has not touched the ball. This, for example is Andrei Arshavin’s Heat Map from yesterday:

Now, we’ll have  a look as to how matches are covered, using this afternoon’s Arsenal v Boro game as an example. I’ll also be doing my own minute-by-minute coverage on the blogs Twitter feed.

The match is live on Sky Sports 1, but as mentioned in the previous post it is possible to watch games (possibly illegally) online. There are plenty of links for live coverage of this game, although I’m in no way recommending that you use them.

The Beeb and The Guardian will also be doing their usual minute-by-minute text updates. The BBC site also does a great match preview for every Premier League game which includes team news, manager’s quotes, form and other relevant stats.

The bookies have, unsurprisingly, made the Gunners firm favourties, use oddschecker to get the best prices.

I’ll be starting the Twitter minute-by-minute ten minutes before kick off with the team news.

Image source: zimbio

Come in closer, listen carefully, I’m going to tell you a secret. Did you know it’s possible to watch pretty much every single Premiership match live on the Web? And not just the Premiership but La Liga, Serie A or even the Japanese J-League, if that’s what floats you boat.

The legal implications are murky, but the opportunity is definitely in place. Sites like MyP2P are awash with links to all manner of live sporting events, not just football, from a seemingly endless source of online streamers who relay live images from all over the world.

If you can’t get to the match on a Saturday, or you can’t afford the subscription fee to watch Sky’s Super Sunday chances are it will be broadcast live somewhere in the world, and will therefore appear on the web.

I’m not advising you to engage in this, potentially illegal, activity, I’m merely informing you that it is out there, if you want it. And a lot of people want it. Justin.tv, which has over 90,000 channels covering all manner of subjects, has recently overtaken Hulu in terms of popularity. Over 41,000 people watched England thrash Slovakia live on the site last month.

The Premier League are constantly fighting a battle to keep these streams offline but with new streams being put up as soon as others are taken down, as well as the legal complications in dealing with sites like PPLive which is based in China, and is therefore not governed by the same copyright laws, they are facing an uphill battle.

It maybe time for the football authorities to embrace the internet, rather than resisting it. If a pay-per-view option was in place for legal streaming of games not shown on television, then surely people would be prepared to pay for a better quality stream. Football writer Gregg Roughley thinks so.

In the meantime, sites like Justin.tv will simply go from strength to strength. The P2P principle on which they are based means that the more people that watch, the better the quality of the stream.

Image source- NOTW

In recent years, the rise of the blog has had a major impact on the Web. Contemporary websites often look and feel like blogs and the term blogging no longer simply refers to geeky online journal entries. Blogs are now one of the most common elements of online journalism – and that, of course, includes football journalism.

Everybody’s at it; the papers, the TV channels,  the fans and even the players themselves.

Like any type of coverage, some of it is good, some not so good. In some places they make the mistake of repackaging stories as blogs, which isn’t really the point. A good blog needs to be a piece that can generate debate and be responded to by its readers. Surprise, surprise The Guardian gets this right, where its football writer’s blogs receive huge volumes of comment.

It isn’t just The Guardian getting it right though, the other usual suspects of The Times and the BBC also have some top blogging. The Beeb in particular has tapped into a few niche markets, courting experts on unfamiliar footballing issues as well as contributions from lesser known players.

In terms of unprofessional blogs, there are plenty of fan-based football blogs out there. These tend to have a very fanziney feel to them though and don’t seem to work as well as the professional blogs. Instead of voicing opinion or raising issues, they tend to come across as mere voiceboxes for fans. They’re more like hobby-sites than blogs, even the more popular ones.

For fans, a platform that does seem to work well is that of forums. Forums give people to chance to voice their opinions and chat with fellow supporters or even rival groups. There have also been incidences of transfer rumours beginning on these fan sites, indicating that lazy journos are using the boards as potential sources.

One such incident, which is now somewhat of an internet legend, was the curious case of Masal Bugduv, the Moldovan teen sensation who made The Times’ 50 Hottest Young Footballers List 2009. The only trouble was, he didn’t exist – he was a fictitious player created and hyped up by message boards and blogs.
]]> http://footballmediawatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/16/football-blogging/feed/ 0 Paul Lamkin http://footballmediawatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/the-academy-of-football/ http://footballmediawatch.wordpress.com/2009/04/12/the-academy-of-football/#comments Sun, 12 Apr 2009 15:03:29 +0000 paultlamkin http://footballmediawatch.wordpress.com/?p=67 ]]>
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Embedding Google Street view is cool. Do it.

With football coverage in such omnipresent fashion, a successful football podcast needs to do more than just report the news, or discuss the latest matches. It needs to offer an insider’s view in to the world of football, with opinion and debate, and it needs to do this in a way the engages and interacts with listeners. Easy huh?

There are a number of popular footie podcasts out there attempting to do this but, at the risk of sounding like a real fanboy, the best offering is, once again, from the online team at The Guardian.

Presented by everyone’s favourite, ice cream eating, quasi-Italian, football presenter James Richardson, the bi-weekly Football Weekly is the number one sports podcast in the UK according to iTunes.

So what makes it better than the rest? Well for a start it ticks all the boxes of what makes a good podcast according to The New Journalism Review.

‘AC Jimbo’ and the team offer comprehensive coverage the latest football talk from around the globe, albeit it in a humorous, witty and often impromptu manner.

The podcast has developed somewhat of a cult following. It is posted on The Guardian’s blog pages and so listeners are able to comment upon it. Podcast regular, and Guardian online writer, Barry Glendenning often partakes in some, quite lively, debate and banter with fans of the show via the comment functionality.

The latest show:

The next best podcast effort comes via The Times online. The Game is not quite as slick or as funny as Football Weekly, despite being presented by Phil Jupitus, but it makes up with that with an incredible assemble of football experts.

Their ‘brains trust’ includes the walking encyclopedia of European football Gabriele Marcotti, Sky Sports’ Spanish football guru Guillem Balague as well as established football journalists such as Patrick Barclay.

This week’s show:

The BBC has a few football podcasts on offer, most of which are just compact versions of 5Live’s football shows. The best of these is the World Football Phone-In podcast, which often includes input from Tim Vickery, whose incredible knowledge of all things Futbol Sudamerica has led to him becoming somewhat of an internet legend.

The latest show:

An honourable mention must also go to the independently produced Football Ramble. It might not have the production expertise of the other podcasts but it has still managed to build up quite a fanbase.

Here it is:

Image Source – pbs

It’s a list of co-ordinates to football stadia which you can paste into Google Earth or Google Maps. It’s pretty cool, give it a try:

The Twitter experiment was almost a success.

The text updates went through no problems, although the picture linking using Twittergram was a bit temperamental – some pictures didn’t link at all, even though they went into the Flickr Photostream without any problems.

I think the experiment showed that Twitter could be an excellent platform for match reporting. The minute-by-minute method, as used by The Guardian and the BBC amongst others would work brilliantly using Twitter. I may even do another experiment with a full minute-by-minute report using Twitter. So stay tuned readers.

*Just a quick edit to point out The Telegraph’s innovate way of using Twitter.

The Guardian’s April Fool’s story this year may have been a bit unimaginative compared to previous years but it did actually raise an interesting point.

Is Twitter based reporting really practical?

Today I am going to give it a try. I’m going to the West Ham v Sunderland match at Upton Park and I’ll be reporting on it, live, via Twitter, using my phone’s 3G internet connection. I’ll be posting comments throughout the day, including some pre-match build up, and  I’ll also be posting photographs.

My text updates won’t be nearly as frequent or detailed as a dedicated football reporter could make them (because of two reasons really – 1. I’ll be starting the day at 12pm in the pub, watching the Spurs game on TV so I may be marginally intoxicated, and 2. I am going to the match as a fan, not as a reporter) but it will serve to highlight the possibilities of harnessing Twitter for this type of match coverage.

To follow me on Twitter go here, although the latest updates will also appear on the Twitter widget on the right-side of this blog. For the photo updates I’ll be using a service called Twittergram, which cleverly updates Twitter everytime I send a photo to my Flickr account. You can also just view the photostream here, or check out the Flickr widget on the blog (bottom right-side).

Image source – zeroinfluence