The Olympics are, like the quadrennial U.S. presidential election, the perfect opportunity for news organizations to experiment with new ways to present news online. The Games are a massive story, but the stakes are typically relatively low, and, perhaps most importantly, the date of the event is known years ahead of time. As a result, outlets have plenty of time to plan coverage and build out interactives.
“A lot of the more ambitious projects we do for this type of coverage we do months and months before the actual event,” New York Times sports editor Jason Stallman told me in 2014.
He continued: “It’s to try and offer as much variety as possible, understanding that for an event like this you have a lot of different people coming at it from a lot of different perspectives, and experiences, and interests — so variety is key.”
With that in mind, and with the Rio Games well underway — I’m watching Brazil and Japan play in the women’s rugby ninth-place match as I type this — we decided to compile a list of some of the coolest digital news experiments around the Olympics.
The list is by no means complete, so please let us know (in the comments or on Twitter) what we’ve missed. We’ll be updating the list throughout the Olympics.
Texting with readers, Getting around the GIF ban, Experimenting with push alerts etc.
(Sourced from agencies, Feature image courtesy:economictimes.indiatimes.com)
