Compiled by DOUG ROBERSON
Newport News (Va.) Daily Press

The Los Angeles Times has increased its coverage of high schools sports in Southern California, producing daily game coverage, features, blogs and rankings for LATimes.com.

The Fresno Bee started three blogs – columnist Matt James, prep sports reporter Andy Boogaard and Robert Zizzo in-game Fresno State football blogs from home games.

■ Our high school sports Web page now has box scores, player stats, schedules, photo gallaries, etc. We're building toward making it even more interactive and comprehensive.

■ We started a Beat the Bee football picking contest in which we invite readers to pick 5 high school, 5 college and 5 NFL games. The winner gets to pick the next week against a Bee "expert." It's gotten huge response.

■ We're about to unveil a "Sports Huddle"-like program to take our high school sports calls in a Web-based system that exports to both the front end and the Web site data base.

The Salt Lake Tribune published a three-part project, "Whitehorse: a modern game, an ancient culture," a narrative account of a season with the girls' basketball team at Whitehorse High, a school located deep in the desolation of the Navajo reservation.

Reporter Lya Wodraska and Photographer Trent Nelson spent nearly four months with the Whitehorse Raiders to produce the series, authored by Wodraska and staff writer Phil Miller. The team provided the journalists with a window into a fiercely proud culture and the series reflected a tale of hope and longing playing out in an unlikely place, the basketball court, on an isolated sweep of Utah's Navajo Nation. (The series can be read at www.sltrib.com).

The Riverside Press-Enterprise: launched its biggest multi-media platform endeavor ever this fall with the introduction of HSI (High School Insider). In past years, the PE has covered Inland Southern California high school athletics chiefly through the print product.

This fall, the approach and coverage widened. The Press-Enterprise has:

■ Launched a weekly 12-page tabloid which is zoned four ways to different markets of our 105-high school coverage area. The tabloid serves two purposes: To serve as a guide to the upcoming weekend's football games; and, to direct readers to our new Web product, HSI.PE.com.

■ HSI.PE.com is the focus point of the endeavor. We have built Web pages for every high school football program where you'll find statistics, rosters, schedules, game stories, etc. You'll also find many extras, including slide shows, videos, picking contests, etc. One of our staff writers, Matt Calkins, provides his weekly Top 10 list via video; we also produce video profiles of key high school figures (coaches, cheerleaders, band directors, referees, etc.). Readers also can upload video and photos for everyone to see (we've received several hundred photos as of the third week of the season).

By late Friday night, video, slide shows, game stories and statistics are all updated and ready for viewing. As the week progresses, we change the main stories and multimedia elements daily.

The site has been spectacularly successful. We received an average of 100,000 page views each week for the first three weekends of the season.

■ We also now offer text-messaging of high school scores directly to cell phones. For just 99 cents per month, subscribers can receive the scores from all of the games in their chosen league. Since we have 12 different leagues, there are a lot of choices.

All of the above is in addition to our daily coverage within The Press-Enterprise.

The Press-Enterprise recently published its biggest Sports Day sections ever over Labor Day weekend. With college football kicking off and the Nextel Cup in Southern California, The Press-Enterprise published:

■ Daily four-page wraps, packaged around the daily newspaper and available only at California Speedway, Sept. 1-3.

■ 24-page preview section on the Auto Club 500 NASCAR race, Sept. 1.

■ 8-page section of coverage within The Press-Enterprise with race wrap-up coverage on Monday, Sept. 4.

■ A 24-page, 124-column Sunday section which included USC and UCLA opening-game packages.

■ Numerous on-line slide shows, videos, flash packages, etc., on PE.com.

Although Nevada is a small state with just three dailies (not counting the Las Vegas Sun, which is now a daily "insert" into the Review-Journal), the Las Vegas Review-Journal paper swept all four spots in the Nevada Press Association contest (results to be released this Saturday). Patrick Everson won first place for his coverage of the inaugural Las Vegas Marathon last December.

The Tucson Citizen started an eight-page high school football tab on Saturdays. It's allowed the Citizen to use more photos and play up more games. Last week, the Citizen staffed 10 contests with photogs (they doubled up on games). The parents and players seem to like it. The Citizen also include the best performances of the night and season. And the high school editor writes a column, picking up on trends of the night. The product is more polished, and is cross-promoted online with photo galleries. The Citizen is technically a p.m. paper, so it has another few hours before deadline. And marketing is taking returns from the weekend to the schools on Monday.

The Modesto Bee, its Web site (modbee.com) and the local ESPN radio station (known as 970-AM) are providing three-way coverage of high school football this season. It came up with a list of games of the week that it's cross-promoting. The three outlets plug the game of the week during the week. On Friday, a local video company – known as Final Cut Video, need to find out for sure – videotapes the game for modbee.com, which is up and ready to view early Saturday mornings. Also, 970-AM broadcasts the game live, then holds a quick interview with the assigned Bee scribe after the game. Before the game, said scribe does a one- or two-minute advance on the game on what and who to look for in front of the camera for Final Cut. We did the modbee.com game of the week last year; 970-AM's role is the addition this season.

The Houston Chronicle sports staff has taken on the production and management of the sports content on the newspaper's website. The sports web staff has been merged with the print side, creating a staff that will be a full multimedia production. Joe Conway, the paper's online sports editor, has become assistant sports editor/online and is now working with the sports staff.

The Denton Record-Chronicle did a four-page pullout for the SMU-North Texas football game, the first meeting between the two metroplex schools since 1992. The paper did stories on UNT offensive coordinator Ramon Flanigan, one of the best QBs in SMU history who led SMU to a win over UNT in 1992, and SMU quarterback Justin Willis, a former star QB for Denton Ryan High School. The paper also talked to Hayden Fry, who coached for both SMU and North Texas.

On the Web front, the Des Moines Register launched destination pages at DesMoinesRegister.com for Iowa and Iowa State called "Hawkeye Insider" and "Cyclone Insider." The pages have deep links, audio/video components and at least three team-related blogs. The Register is posting a video segment each Monday morning from the Iowa and Iowa State beat writers called "Andrew Logue's Hawkeye Report" and "Randy Peterson's Cyclone Report." In those segments, a former TV reporter on our online staff "interviews" the reporters about the game just past and the game to come.

In print, the Register promotes one unique Web element each day – meaning there's some "Web-only" content on the site every day, seven days a week.

The Register also is doing quarter-by-quarter Web updates from each game this season along with postgame wrapups that range from a discussion forum question about a key moment in the game to a dedicated blogger hired for football who writes about the game that just ended.

The Register's Web site also has a new page called "CIML Insider," which focuses on the Central Iowa Metropolitan League in the Des Moines area. In addition to links, Register-produced high school rankings are published there along with all-time all-state teams picked by the Register and more. A reporter went around the state to produce a preseason state high school preview video that included schools of all sizes.

Links:

■ "Andrew Logue's Hawkeye Report" video at DesMoinesRegister.com/hawkeyeinside

■ "Randy Peterson's Cyclone Report" video at DesMoinesRegister.com/cycloneinsider

The Oklahoman on Aug. 28 launched The Pass, a premium Web site for college sports fans in Oklahoma.

The site, which contained content not available in the newspaper, is available for $7 per month or $63 a year. It is free to seven-day, direct-pay subscribers of the newspaper. A new, full-time reporter was hired to write for The Pass. Blake Jackson covers recruiting, provides audio from coaches news conferences and blogs live from college games on Saturday.

Blogs were key for The Pass. All of The Oklahoman's writers blog at least three times a week. Jackson blogs daily. All users are given their own blog as well. The Pass also hired three guest columnists to provide commentary throughout the week. Oklahoman columnist Berry Tramel gives subscribers a bonus column each Monday. As of Sept. 18, more than 1,350 people had signed up for The Pass.

In the Missouri Press Foundation Better Newspaper Contest, the Kansas City Star placed first in Best Sports Page among Class 2 (larger) papers. The St. Louis Post-Dispatch was second, the Springfield News-Leader placed third, while St. Joseph News-Press and the Cape Girardeau Southeast Missourian received honorable mention.

In the Class 1 division, another APSE member, the Columbia Missourian, placed first for the Best Sports Page.

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