Audience Building Initiatives

Introduction

Audience Building Initiative: McHenryCountySports

By Rich Gordon

Introduction

This occasional series of case studies showcases both operational excellence and initiatives that have successfully increased audience for newspaper Web sites.

Summary

The Northwest News Group’s McHenryCountySports.com has proven especially successful at connecting teenagers with the newspaper company, which publishes the Northwest Herald (circulation 36,600 daily, 38,900 Sunday), the Kane County Chronicle (circulation 12,200 daily, 12,000 Sunday) and a variety of other publications in the Chicago suburbs.

The company developed the Web site devoted to prep sports more than four years ago. The site, which includes articles, comprehensive statistics and plentiful video, has grown steadily more popular.

History of McHenryCountySports.com

In July of 2004, the Northwest News Group invited online news pioneer Rob Curley, then working at the Lawrence (Kan.) Journal-World, to make a presentation about digital content and strategy.

“He said, ‘You’ve got to pick something in your community that people really care about and really go after it,’” recalled Chris Krug, general manager and executive editor of Northwest News Group.

John Rung, chief operating officer of Shaw Suburban Media, jotted down a few words on a piece of paper and passed it to Krug. The paper said, “Prep sports site.”

“Forty-five days later, we launched McHenry County Sports,” Krug said.

At first, the site was “pretty rudimentary, very basic,” Krug said. “We had always been really, really big on covering preps here, but we didn’t always display it so well online. We took all the good stuff we did which didn’t have the best presence on nwherald.com [the paper’s flagship site] and really just showcased it.”

From the beginning, the site featured original game video.

“The video [player on the Web site] … was literally the size of two postage stamps. Our grasp of the technology was really in its infancy … but even in the first year we would have new video three, four or five times a week,” Krug said. “We were doing something no one else was doing, perhaps even in the whole Midwest, but it was just a starting point and we knew that.”

For 2005, the site developed its own online statistics database, “probably the most labor-intensive and difficult thing we attempted to do,” Krug said. The database was built in-house by the company’s IT staff. “We had to invent our own database. In 2004, there wasn’t someone I could call to get code to share with us.”

Over the years, the site improved its approach to video, added a regular feature of “power rankings” for area sports teams, and developed successful prep sports blogs.

The most popular blog, called “The Rant,” is “kind of the godfather of McHenry County Sports,” Krug said.

What the data show

Because of changes in the site’s technology and metrics tools, Northwest News Group does not have comprehensive comparative data over time. In addition, traffic varies widely from month to month, depending on which sports are in season. But Mike Weiler, managing editor for interactive media, was able to pull together the following data on page views between August and November, the sites’ peak traffic months:

• August-November, 2004: 383,420 page views
• August-November, 2005: 916,631 page views
• August-November, 2006: 1,023,870 page views
• August-November, 2007: 1,490,746 page views

Traffic to McHenryCountySports.com averages 8 to 11 percent of the total page views for Northwest News Group, Weiler said.

The paper was surprised to discover how strongly the site connected with high school students, Krug said.

“We thought we would be getting the people who were post-high school, parents and others who wanted to stay in touch with their hometown team,” Krug said. “The reality is, this site just slams through the sweet spot of 14-21, that elusive demographic newspapers have been chasing for years.”

How it works

McHenryCountySports.com is fully integrated into the operation of the sports department at the Northwest Herald. It launched with two dedicated employees: Les Johnson, a part-time sportswriter who became the site’s full-time content producer, and Ryan Glab, who served as its Web technician. Now, Glab has moved on to broader responsibilities for the company, sometimes including work on McHenry County Sports, and Johnson is the only full-time staff member devoted exclusively to the site.

Johnson, whose title is assistant editor, does many things for the site. He keeps scores and standings updated, and he produces original content (such as game predictions, power rankings and features such as athlete of the week and play of the week).

In addition to Johnson, everyone on the sports staff contributes to the site – posting to blogs, approving comments and helping produce original content, Weiler said. A key aspect of the site is its blogs, especially The Rant.

“The Rant is supposed to be a combination of a few things. He’s the unreasonable parent, the frustrated ex-jock and the crotchety ex-coach, all wrapped up into one,” Krug said. “He doesn’t like things that are new, he’s ‘old school.’ The Rant works because he’s very true-to-life. When kids read him, they can hear their coach or their grandpa.”

The biggest part of Johnson’s job is shooting and editing original video.

Johnson has a degree in broadcast journalism, but had focused on radio. “Chris Krug handed me a $400 video camera and said, ‘Make stuff happen, use your imagination,’” Johnson recalled. “I became a videographer. I had absolutely zero experience prior to doing this job. I had done a lot of stuff in the studio, but I had really never touched a video camera.”

The most common and most popular videos on the Web site are game highlights. For each sport, Johnson had to learn where to position himself to get video of the key plays:

• For football, Johnson moves around the field so he is downfield from the line of scrimmage. This enables him to get action shots of plays coming toward the camera.
• For soccer, where the action can move up and down the field very quickly, Johnson generally positions himself near midfield to maximize the opportunity to tape key plays in the game.
• For baseball and softball, Johnson usually takes up a position on the first base side with a clear view of home plate. “You realize right away that this isn’t WGN and you don’t have 13 cameras, so you’re not going to be able to get the ball on every play. What’s important is the symbolism of the guy crossing the plate.”
• For basketball, because scoring is so frequent, Johnson tries to follow the leading scorers and get video just as they are taking a shot.

“There were many times when I missed the action when I started,” Johnson said. “If you zoom in too tight and there is a trick (football) play, you’re going to be zoomed in on the guy who doesn’t have the ball and meanwhile someone else is moving down the sideline.”

Johnson tries to shoot as much raw video as possible. Then he edits the footage to capture the important moments. To describe what’s happening on the field, he superimposes a text caption on the video. When possible, at the end of the video, he includes snippets of interviews with key players.

“You really make or break the whole thing in the editing process,” Johnson said.

A typical game video runs about 3 minutes, and is compiled from 50-60 minutes of video, Johnson said. “Our theory is if we go much longer than 3 minutes, we lose people.” He said he tries to make each piece “chock full of action.” Initially, the site had live video from one game a night. By the 2007 football season, newspaper videographers were videotaping up to three games a night, Johnson said. The site videotapes roundtable sports discussions involving the paper’s sportswriters, and sports features as well.

For instance, Northwest Herald videographer Danielle Guerra followed the Marian Central High School girls’ soccer team for the entire 2007 spring season. The Marian Central story had 13 episodes. In addition to stories about the team and its games, one chapter was about graduation and another (entitled “Cleats to Heels”) was about the girls’ experiences at the prom.

Feature stories like those about the Marian Central team “have broader appeal, and they really do interest more people, and a more diverse crowd of people, but I think the highlights are what the hardcore fans like, and the players and their parents really enjoy them,” Johnson said.

The site encourages reader comments and contributions. The site’s “power rankings” tool enables readers to vote on their own rankings in addition to reading the staff’s (Johnson’s) rankings. “Stuff like that is huge,” Johnson said. “You’re including people in what’s going on on the site. People really like that.”

All user comments are prescreened before publication, and the entire sports staff helps with this, Johnson said. “We have not been lucky enough to be able to let people post without moderation. Probably 98 percent of the people do not abuse the privilege, but we do get stuff that would be offensive to a lot of people.” The staff strives to ensure that the site puts kids in a “positive light,” Johnson said.

The site features polls regularly. Earlier this year, one poll question asked readers to choose the high school softball pitcher who would win the most games in the upcoming season. In a week, the poll got 800 votes.

Promotion and connections to print

Northwest News Group spent some money to promote the launch of McHenryCountySports.com – buying billboard space and running a few radio commercials, Krug said. But most of the promotion has been “guerrilla marketing,” such as distribution of T-shirts and hats at games.

In the site’s first year, Cary-Grove High School went to the state football championship game, “feeding us a ton of hits on the site,” Johnson recalled. Northwest News Group had T-shirts created that said “Cary-Grove Trojans” on the front and “McHenryCountySports.com” on the back. The T-shirts were handed out to the players, coaches and fans traveling to watch the team.

“In that sports community, that really established [us] with them,” Johnson said. “We even had coaches wearing our shirts.”

Beyond the marketing programs, “our best promotional tool is the paper,” Weiler said. “Our sports staff does an outstanding job of promoting stuff in the paper daily, and that is almost always on the sports cover. They also promote our videos and our blogs.”

Lessons

• A prep sports Web site can be successful in many communities. “This is something that every local newspaper can and should do,” Krug said.
• Be patient. In the first year, traffic to McHenryCountySports.com was “not great,” Johnson said. But with time and the addition of new content and functionality, the site was able to grow a sizable audience and attract new advertisers.
• Enabling user participation drives traffic. People interested in prep sports are passionate and want to engage with other users. Polls, comments and the ability for users to build their own team “power rankings” have been critical to the site’s success.
• Local sports video can be produced without a huge investment. With a $400 camera and free software, the site was able to build an audience. And a video “chock full” of game highlights can be produced effectively by a solo videographer in a single night’s work.
• Among the staff, there’s no substitute for local knowledge and expertise. “You don’t want people who think they’re going to do this for a few years and then go cover the Cubs,” Krug said. “You need people who will actually get to know the local personalities and people in your prep sports community.”

Technology

The site’s content management system is provided by TownNews, a popular vendor among small and medium-sized newspapers. The statistics database was developed in-house by Northwest News Group’s IT staff.

For video, the site launched with consumer-type cameras costing less than $400 and used Apple’s free iMovie software to edit the video. Initially, videos were published in QuickTime format. In 2006, the company upgraded its video tools – acquiring high-definition Sony cameras and switching to Final Cut Pro for video editing. The company also switched to the Flash Video format for online delivery and purchased some boom microphones, clip-on microphones and wireless microphones.

“We get a lot better video quality, plus better audio quality,” Weiler said. “Without good audio, video isn’t much more than mildly interesting.”

A key advantage of the high-definition video cameras is that individual frames have high enough resolution to be used as full-size images in the print edition, Weiler said.

Revenue

Historically, McHenryCountySports.com has attracted some advertisers especially interested in an audience of high school students, parents and others interested in prep sports. But many of the ad positions on the site were filled by advertisers who bought “run-of-site” banner campaigns in which their ads appeared on NWHerald.com as well.

But the site has now reached an important stage in its evolution, said Scott Rosenburgh, vice president for interactive media for Shaw Suburban Media, which includes Northwest News Group. As of May, the company removed ad positions on the prep sports site from the run-of-site inventory. Now all the advertisers on the site are interested specifically in its audience.

“It’s now a successful microsite,” Rosenburgh said. “We’re not relying any more on the parent site traffic. We’re not relying any more on the parent site brand in order to drive advertising dollars. It’s become a standalone site.”

A visit to the site in early June showed advertisements from:

• a local hospital
• an online store for athletic apparel
• an orthodontist
• a local sports training center
• a local bank running a sports-themed banner (“Score more with online banking”).

Car dealers have always liked advertising on the site because it reaches families, Rosenburgh said. It also has the potential to reach “microlocal accounts” of businesses serving smaller geographic communities, he said.

“We were never able to drill that far down into geographic targeting,” Rosenburgh said. “This site will enable us to compete with the (team) uniform sponsors and the folks that put banners out at ballparks.”

Relevant links

• McHenry County Sports home page
• “The Rant” blog
• Video archive
• Statistics section
• Athlete of the Week feature
• “The Season” (a week-by-week video chronicle of a girls’ soccer team)
• “So You Want To Go Online With Preps” – Associated Press Sports Editors tip sheet from former Northwest Herald sports editor David Schwartz

About the author

Rich Gordon is an associate professor at the Medill School of Journalism, Northwestern University. Prof. Gordon directs the school’s graduate program in Web publishing. For the 2006-07 academic year, he has taken on a special assignment as director of digital media in education. He began his professional career at the Richmond (Va.) Times-Dispatch, and later worked at The Palm Beach (Fla.) Post and The Miami Herald, where he became the company’s first new media director. In addition to teaching and research about new media journalism, Rich has served as a consultant for the Newspaper Association of America, Pulitzer Newspapers and Grainger Corp. He speaks regularly to professional and industry groups.

Audience Data and Media Usage

Media Usage: A Generational Perspective
Ball State Middletown Media Studies
Pew Internet and American Life Project
State of the News Media 2005
Center for Media Research
U.S. Census Bureau Press Releases
Carnegie Corporation: Abandoning the News
Ketchum: National Survey of Women
BLS: American Time Use Survey