Football time

Before you start wondering what Football has to do with my research and this blog I will tell you what they have in common: Football is all over the news these days in Europe.
Because of the continental championship, European news sites are doing their best to tell the story different, not a different story, online. From flash applications to last minute updates, the Web is helping European journalists to enhance their coverage in a way that they hadn’t done before.

The special navigation bar is everywhere in El Pais

In Spain, the newspaper El Pais, has created a whole new site for the event coverage, with live updates that are also published in the newspaper site. In that case you can even expand the window where the information is displayed, I guess for those who are not big fans of football and can get annoyed with red flags everytime a player scores a goal or a game is over…

Games for Spaniards in El Pais

Once you enter the site, you can read blogs, watch videos from the games, engage in forums about the games, participate in Trivial Games, (as you can see from the picture, I don’t know that much about European football) and see animations of the last goals scored by the teams. This specific animation is inspired by a very popular game among kids -and not so kids- in Spain, using bottle caps with the picture or the name of the player, which are kicked with one finger to push the “ball,” usually a little bean. Yes, the ones you also eat. We are like that. 

Excerpt from  
comments in the
Le Monde special
coverage

The French newspaper Le Monde has also launched special coverage on its Web site, however, this is not as interactive looking. The reader has to dig a little bit to find videos and blogs or even games to participate in something rather than just readings. The front page of the special coverage includes blogs and comments from readers who have participated in the different forums but the look of the site is similar to the news site, so the reinforcement of interactivity is more difficult. 

The Sun, an English newspaper, has also kept a similar appeareance for the special coverage, with an overwhelming amount of photographs. And also similar to what other outlets have done on their front pages, The Sun offers a “Live Match Centre” with instant updates about the games.   

In germany, the Frankfurter Alemeine Zeitung has also created a separate site for the Euro2008 coverage, different from the news site and its Sports section, with a little teaser that takes readers from the news home page to the special report. The special coverage includes blogs, videos, games, live coverage, a fan section and all the news about the German team, with a navigation bar animated with Flash in the middle of the page. 

Navigation bar in the Frankfurter Alemeine Zeitung special coverage site.

As you can see, Football has inspired everyone in Europe to be a better reporter online, improving the coverage thanks to what the Internet and online applications have to offer. Hope you enjoy!

 

 

~ by onewayoranother on June 13, 2008.