Journalistic Approaches towards Live Online Sports Coverage

Hamburg.
For the post-lunch session on this second day at ECREA 2010, I’m at a panel on online journalism. Steen Steensen is the first presenter, and his interest is in online sports journalism, and specifically the live coverage of football by sports Websites. What journalistic ideals does such coverage promote?

Live online sports coverage, especially when using streaming or chat tools like CoverItLive, is perhaps the most liquid form of journalism; it allows journalists to easily cover live events, and users to comment and provide feedback. Sports journalism especially in electronic media generally relies very heavily on immediacy, of course.

If professional ideology is becoming increasingly important as a defining factor in journalism, and journalists are defined not simply by what they do, but how much they adhere to professional ideas, then how this unfolds in sports coverage is an interesting question. Steen examined the online coverage in Norwegian news Websites, observing journalists’ activities and interviewing them.

VG Nett Live is the bigger site, and holds the rights to transmit online football content in video (for subscription holders). Users can check live games and follow minute-by-minute updates of game action; additionally, there is a CoverItLive chat section, and video clips of goals and other scenes are made available a few minutes after they happen.

Dagbladet.no uses a different software solution, where commentary by journalists covering the various games is aggregated. Additionally, reader comments and responses from dedicated journalists hosting the overall chat are also included.

Journalists on VG Nett who engage in this call themselves ‘Livers’, and considers this practice as a form of journalism; UGC is separated from journalistic content, and traditional journalistic ideals (accuracy, objectivity, immediacy) are seen as important.

On Dagbladet, journalists also see themselves as Livers, but here news and journalistic content is integrated with reader chat and commentary; while traditional journalistic ideals are emphasised, so are alternative ideals like humour, subjectivity, and social competence). This could point to a future clash of norms.