Sports sections hustle for an edge in the digital age

by Roman Stubbs

George Geise never thought this business would age him. He thought that sports, and the way they played out on his pages for the past 40 years, would keep him young forever. And yet, Geise is now the old breed. He wanders a path with the golden days behind him, the tenderfoot Twitter, Facebook and Internet videos following him wherever he goes.

A student journalist captures audio at a football practice. (Justin Franz/MJR)

The 62-year-old sports editor of the Great Falls Tribune cherishes these days in 2010, which are perhaps some of the last of his career. It’s a cold Friday afternoon in February, and Geise is working on his own terms. The quiet Tribune sports office, or “toy department,” in Great Falls, Montana, sits in the back corner of the newsroom, with the platinum-haired Geise just arriving to work the 2-to-11 shift at his cubicle in the forefront. There is no video equipment lying out — just late 1990s computer screens displaying Quark agate layout, keys popping, and a fax machine in the corner to retrieve and send news to and from the rural towns across the central plains.

There are state basketball tournaments spanning every corner of the state this particular weekend, and many major Montana newspapers — the Independent Record in Helena and the Gazette in Billings — are complementing their print with video on their websites.

But not at the Great Falls Tribune.

Geise, who has been at the helm for more than 32 years, acknowledges that Tribune sports multimedia is nearly nonexistent. In fact, never in the history of the sports department has there been a video posted on the publication’s website, which has been up since the late 1990s.

Former Grizzly Football head coach Bobby Hauck is interviewed after a game. (Justin Franz/MJR)

Technology has certainly made his job easier in the past quarter century. When he started in this business in rural Wisconsin, he wrote stories on a typewriter. There was little room for error, little room for changes on the fly, because copy editors bloodied up his prep sports copy on hard paper before sending it off to the publishing company.

He moved west in 1975, and has been a sports editor ever since. Each year has inched his mind closer to the fact that the business is morphing into a wild, fresh digital frontier. And it is taking sports reporting with it. ***

Major newspapers in Montana have been producing multimedia for the past five years, with an evolutionary arc. Blogging and in-game updates have strengthened with supplemental websites for beat reporters to reach online audiences, and the emergence of Twitter in 2007 allowed sports sections to beam live scores and news across the state. Online slideshows have allowed photographers to complement print stories with more than one dominant event photo. Montana’s sports online video journalism scene is at times stylish, but is also equally primitive.

The Independent and Gazette have carved out their places in the digital realm by featuring high school athletics — usually three to four minute videos that are tucked within the story text on the respective website. The videos have an established trend: spliced sections of highlights, with the sound of coach and player interviews in the background.

In Missoula, Montana, sports editor Bob Meseroll’s section has benefited greatly from the services of Bill Schwanke, a two-decade radio production veteran who started a career in the online news field just four years ago. The Missoulian brought him in because of his audio experience, believing Schwanke’s handling of sound editing could be translated into handling video software.

Schwanke uses a high-definition Canon to shoot — although the camera isn’t digital. He began to refine his skills at shooting video during prep games in Missoula, which was a formidable task. It entailed that Schwanke learn to strike the balance in distance between the field and the players.

“It’s a constant learning process,” he says.

Although local high school sports garner a lot of online interest, Schwanke and company have prospered with video reporting on University of Montana football. The multimedia production includes slideshows from photographers after each home game, in addition to Schwanke’s video clips and interview with Griz football beat reporter Fritz Neighbor, who does his twice-a-week analysis titled the “Fritz Blitz.”

The Missoulian trend has become consistent throughout the seasons, with Schwanke also filming seasonal commentary from prep sports beat reporter Nick Lockridge. On average, the site posts two to three sports videos a week. Schwanke, who works in the newsroom, is the only staff member who shoots video for the sports department.

“When they do hire another full time staff person,” he says, “they are going to hire someone who has both writing and multimedia skills.”

***

Montana State beat reporter Will Holden has the versatility that Schwanke speaks of — skills that are needed among the three-man staff at the Bozeman Chronicle. Holden is a true utility man. He doesn’t cover the men’s basketball beat at Montana State; he smothers it.

From the press row, he sets up his tripod and swivels his video camera endlessly to capture action on the court. During timeouts, he updates his Bobcat blog by writing a couple of detailed sentences about the game, then uses his simple point-and-shoot digital camera to take a picture of the team huddle or fans in the arena. On the following timeout, he will tweet the action to reach a larger regional base than the Bozeman faithful who follow his blog. And, by the end of the night, he will have a notebook full of notes that will become the framework of an 800-word game story for the morning’s paper.

“It makes for an interesting two hours of basketball, that’s for sure,” Holden says.

Holden loves to write, but admits that he has never particularly enjoyed reading; the traditional game-story in print never appealed to him.

This fall he traveled to East Lansing, Michigan, to watch Michigan State and Montana State play on opening day of the college football season, and it was there that he observed the tactics of a few Detroit Free Press reporters in the press box. He saw the emphasis they put on online updating and multimedia, and less concentration on the relentless notes for the print story.

Holden carried the observation back to Bozeman, and is now working every day to capitalize on the opportunity the online landscape presents, an opportunity that he calls “visual analysis.”

“As much as (the business) is changing, it’s not changing,” Holden says. “There are people who go online and look at video. Ten minutes of video can be just as good as reading a story that is 1,000 words.”

In his video pieces from the press row, Holden has brought a novel idea to Montana sports coverage: in-game video blogs. Holden streams video highlights, then adds transparent-commentary text on top of the video, providing the viewer with a hybrid of highlights and blogging.

In his video posted from March’s Big Sky men’s basketball tournament in Bozeman, Holden posted a video blog about Portland State upsetting Montana State. In one clip from the first half, Holden displays a 12-second clip of Portland State guard Dominic Waters, who was playing the game with a heel injury.

Whether the injury was widely known is irrelevant; but the clip captures Waters making a steal, dribbling the length of the court and pulling up to make a 15-foot jumper. In Holden’s transparent text at the bottom of the video, he uses a headline that reads: “Waters fights back.” The sub-head reads: “PSU senior gets the steal & finish then limps back on injured heel.”

Traditionally this play from Waters, arguably the best player on the floor that night, would’ve been omitted from print, and the color from his gritty performance could very well be unsubstantiated. But Holden’s video accomplishes what many in the business are becoming incredibly attracted to: the ability to expand the volume of game coverage with video, words and beat reporting on an injury that was a major factor in that game. Other innovative ideas have developed across the state. At the young Flathead Beacon in Kalispell, Montana, Lido Vizzutti, has been experimenting with video and still images all year long.

In December he debuted a clip of still images capturing a photo shoot of all of Flathead’s top prep athletes. Vizzutti set the images to a rotating speed, documenting the whole shoot, from equipment set-up to the final snapshot. This was reinforced with the sounds of the shoot, from the clanks of set-up to the clicks of camera’s snapping, all set to polka-style beat.

***

The measure of success in this new wave of storytelling remains uncharted, and not only in a financial sense (advertising in Montana is rarely sponsored on sports videos). Aside from the shortage of resources and time, what remains is a tremendous freedom for journalists to redefine the craft of a traditional sports story.

“We’re definitely seeing people push in new directions,” says Joel Odom, the online sports editor at The Oregonian.

Videographers at newspapers such as The Spokesman–Review, The Seattle Times and The Oregonian are only becoming better and more seasoned. Not only is the game coverage in these markets expansive, but there has also been a growth in profile narratives and locker room interaction that is streamed to the viewer.

While it is unfair to compare the multimedia capabilities between the markets in Spokane, Washington, and Portland, Oregon, to Missoula and Bozeman, the opportunity for growth in video structure and style carries significant potential to change sports coverage in Montana. Resources may have to be reallocated to feed the market with more sports video.

“I think it’s going to have to be both,” Odom says of preserving the print coverage and cultivating video.

He added that while video presents problems for a small, older demographic such as Great Falls, the business to engage the consumer remains competitive.

“If it’s not going to come from the Great Falls Tribune, its going to come from another source,” Odom says. “Or at least there is the opportunity for that.”

***

Back in Great Falls, it still makes sense that one of the state’s most respected newspapers hasn’t cultivated sports video at a time when the market is presenting itself, at least, as a possibility. And the reasons delve deeper than the job cuts induced by Gannett in the past two and a half years. The corporation vowed to adapt to the trend of multimedia reporting five years ago. Geise began to attend workshops on implementing sports video on the website. “We were going to take it slow,” he says.

But soon there wasn’t proper equipment to shoot sports. The Gannett Web had yet to adopt the video platform Maven (the company installed the popular Brightcove platform this January) and wasn’t compatible with digital imaging, and key member Robin Loznak, who was ready to spearhead the effort, departed for a new media job in Oregon. Today, the only trace of multimedia is the periodic blogging by Geise or assistant sports editor Scott Mansch, who also opened a one-time Twitter account in March just to cover the Montana Grizzlies men’s basketball team at the NCAA tournament in San Jose.

Although the lack of funding and training is hampering the section in developing a presence on the Web, other forces are at work.

Geise runs the most veteran staff in the state, perhaps one of the most experienced crews in the country. All four of his reporters are in their early-to-late fifties, all in the backstretch of their respective careers. Four of the five (Geise, Mansch, Mike Town and Curt Backa) have worked together for over two decades, and their methods in many ways have never changed.

For the district tournaments, for example, Geise will arrive a few hours early to watch consolation games and scout out information for future reporting, before covering bracket games for the next day’s paper. He will not Twitter or Facebook or blog the scores live, just watch.

To him, technology has become somewhat of a hindrance to sports reporters at live events, where the focus is on the second-by-second rattle of the online world, rather than the copy being written for the morning’s customers. In Great Falls, those print customers are as steady as they have ever been, with the Tribune reaching a circulation of nearly 34,000. The demographic in Great Falls is trending older – with 40 percent of the population sitting at 44 years or older. The town is sleepy and conservative in many respects, devoid of a vibrant college atmosphere that attracts online and multimedia viewership, and sits on wide-open range, a rural center. Not exactly the formula that spells a multimedia hotbed, or even at least a scene comparable to Billings, Missoula or Helena.

Still, Geise believes another push could be made to implement video clips of high school and college athletics within the next decade, but not likely before his retirement within the next few years. And even then, the market in Great Falls isn’t likely to become starving for sports multimedia. Geise isn’t a diehard newspaper purist. But he is without question an old schooler, continuing to survive in an infant multimedia world.

“We take pride in what we do,” Geise says. “But we don’t take pride in not doing multimedia.”