The Chicago Cubs opened what I hope will be a long run in the 2008 baseball playoffs Wednesday night. Which gave me a chance to check out how a couple of my favorite newspapers handle big, live sporting events online.
Chicago Tribune
Live coverage: The core of the Trib’s live coverage was it’s From the Cubicle column (which has been around for at least a couple years now), offering entertaining play-by-play of the game. Photos from Trib photographers were posted during the game. And a live scoreboard was added to the home page.
Reader interaction: Readers could add their comments at the bottom of the Cubicle column.
My thoughts: The Tribune appeared to pretty much play this straight – offering the same experience it did for Cubs games all season long (but with a bigger splash on the home page). Maybe they’re waiting for the World Series, but it would have been nice to have at least seen some updates from Colonel Tribune on Twitter.
Chicago Sun-Times
Live coverage: They offered a live chat for readers using CoverItLive. They promoted blog updates and Twitter updates from the home page, but neither were being updated as the game was in progress (only saw one Tweet). There was a live scoreboard on the home page, but it stopped working halfway through the game and appeared to be replaced with an ad (see image below).
Reader interaction: The live chat allowed readers to chat, read what others had to say and vote on in-game polls.
My thoughts: Even though I am a big fan of CoverItLive, this chat didn’t work for me. It felt like there were too many people commenting, so it was difficult to follow along. Maybe having a sportswriter or columnist in the chat offering thoughts/analysis of the game would have helped (or maybe they had that and I missed it amid all the comments).
Maybe the Sun-Times felt the same way, because they didn’t leave the whole chat online, just some excerpts.
My favorite thing was that they quickly wrote and posted a story about the fan who caught DeRosa’s home run ball.
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For fun, I looked at boston.com and latimes.com to see what they were doing live for the late game. They weren’t doing much, but both have partnered with Jacked to offer live scoring of games. I had never head of Jacked, but I was impressed. I already have an email into them to talk about a partnership with DesMoinesRegister.com.
