The lower league footy fan is a breed apart from everyone else. Standing out in the bitter cold and rain to see their team invariably lose or draw, their commitment is second to none. (As you can tell, I’m more of a rugby girl.) My home-town team, Gloucester City, has a fleet of such supporters, one of whom is my dad.
In our loft, he has boxes and boxes of football programmes from Gloucester City matches. He can give me the low-down on who’s doing well and who’s flagging. If he wants, he can even sponsor a player’s shoe-lace for the sum of about £5. But he can’t watch it on television. And he can only read scraps in the Citizen, our local paper, which prefers to concentrate on rugby, which is much more popular in Gloucester.
My point is that there is a niche market for news and information in the less obvious places. It won’t have the following of “the cherry and whites” or the Man Uniteds of the world, but it will arguably be appreciated more by its passionate, but small, audience.
Rick Waghorn, brains behind My Football Writer, a website which is filling the news gap in lower league football, emphasised the view that news is going local.
Waghorn’s site features news, commentary and analysis on small-time football clubs Norwich City and Ipswich Town, which do not receive the coverage that more popular and consequently wealthier teams receive.
This move is supported by the BBC’s attempt to launch a £68m network of local news websites with video content. This idea has been rejected by the BBC Trust due to what Sir Michael Lyons called:
“the negative impact that the local video proposition could have on commercial media services which are valued by the public and are already under pressure”
Waghorn thinks this could have been the perfect opportunity for local news to hook up with the BBC, through developing the “link economy”, championed by Jeff Jarvis, and which he deems vital to the future of online journalism.
A few people found it weird that the site featured a taped pub conversation between former players. They’re missing the point. The site is aimed at true supporters, who would be excited at the chance to get close to their team and maybe get the inside version of something. Just like some people would get excited at listening to such a conversation with Beckham or Ronaldo.
It all boils down to the same thing: knowing what your audience want, which is nothing new in good journalism.
1 Comment
December 8, 2008 at 1:38 pm
Looks like Channel 4 see the future as local too : http://www.nma.co.uk/Articles/40727/4IP+launches+social+network+for+Norwich+City+FC.html