NEW YORK, Aug. 21, 2014 /PRNewswire/ -- The USA TODAY Sports Media Group today re-launched
USA TODAY High School Sports, the nation's leading source for high
school sports news and information, in a format optimized for
mobile that also includes live-streaming video capabilities and
crowd-sourced photography and content from games all over the
country.
As part of the re-launch, USA TODAY High School Sports has also
introduced its first-ever app for all mobile and tablet devices,
now available for free on both iTunes and Google Play.
USA TODAY High School Sports is the latest property within the
USA TODAY Sports Media Group to be
re-built on its proprietary lightweight digital publishing platform
to optimize content experiences across all platforms, specifically
mobile and tablet devices. This follows similar re-launches within
the past year for MMAjunkie, HoopsHype and The Big Lead, among
others, as well as for the initial launch of For The Win, the
fastest-growing sports site in history.
A major part of the USA TODAY High School Sports re-launch
features new partnerships with leading-edge mobile innovators for
video streaming (High School Cube) and crowd-sourced photography
and content (Scoopshot) that now give USA TODAY High School Sports
the potential to provide coverage from every high school sports
event in the country.
"This re-launch marks another major step forward in our
commitment to providing the best high school sports coverage
anywhere in the country," said Dave
Morgan, president of the USA TODAY Sports Media Group. "USA TODAY High
School Sports is now fully optimized to engage with its core
audience on the platforms, and in the hometowns, where they live,
and our new partnerships will allow us to engage with them in much
more meaningful ways than ever before."
Some of the highlights of the new USA TODAY High School Sports
include:
- A mobile-first, responsive design, along with a focus on social
sharing for increased "conversation" and organic audience
development.
- Simplified navigation and user experience.
- Live-event broadcast capabilities for any school in the country
via High School Cube, which allows schools to safely and simply
broadcast their events live in HD from mobile devices, laptops, or
advance production equipment. Every participating school gets
its own hyper-local team channel, called a "cube," that allows
parents, students, alumni, and the local community to watch the
school's games and events for free, no matter where they
are.
- Ability of professional photographers. Student journalists and
others to easily shoot and upload still and video images through a
strategic partnership with the Scoopshot app. This greatly expands
photo, video and text coverage capacity of the nation's 18,000-plus
high schools. Content will go into a central, authenticated
database and payment will be provided to each contributor every
time their content is used.
Scoopshot currently offers media outlets and brands access to
nearly 570,000 mobile photographers in 177 countries around the
world and its service is used by more than 70 global media
outlets.
- Real-time score streaming and social media conversations from
high school games in progress throughout the country via
ScoreStream.
- Greatly expanded data, including school, event and athlete
profiles.
As part of each partnership, USA TODAY High School Sports will
work with its more than 120 local media brand partners, as well as
its network of more than 5,000 school athletic directors, to
introduce the partnerships to their respective school journalism
curriculums to enable high school students to not only learn new,
rapidly changing media techniques, but to also allow them to get
real newsgathering experience.
About the USA TODAY Sports
Media Group:
The USA TODAY
Sports Media Group encompasses all sports initiatives across USA
TODAY Sports and Gannett's more than 120 well-known local media
brands. It also includes the sports photography wire service USA
TODAY Sports Images; leading high school sports destination USA
TODAY High School Sports; the social news hub For The Win, and the
hundreds of sites within USA TODAY
Sports Digital Properties such as TheBigLead.com and mixed martial
arts site MMAJunkie.com, among others. USA TODAY is owned by Gannett Co., Inc. (NYSE:
GCI).
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SOURCE USA TODAY