Nieman Foundation at Harvard
HOME
          
LATEST STORY
The media becomes an activist for democracy
ABOUT                    SUBSCRIBE
Sept. 11, 2013, 12:11 p.m.
LINK: q.usatoday.com  ➚   |   Posted by: Justin Ellis   |   September 11, 2013

The USA Today Sports Media Group is out with a new sports news and analysis aggregator called The Q. It’s human-backed aggregation, with a focus for now on NFL news from beat writers and columnists from around the sports journalism world. As they put it:

The Q delivers sports news to fans through a quick-hit, near-real-time stream of editor-vetted analysis, designed specifically for on-the-go consumption. From Sundays to storylines that everyone is talking about, the Q keeps fans out in front.

USA TODAY Sports Media Group is putting the Q at the center of its NFL coverage on Sundays, Monday nights and Thursday nights as an optimal second-screen companion for fans following NFL games, filtering out everything but the best real-time analysis through editor-vetted curation and exclusive, original content. Throughout the rest of the week, the Q service tracks the biggest storylines and connects fans to the most interesting analysis, whether they are waiting for an office meeting to start or waiting in line for coffee.

If that sounds an awful lot like Quickish, the sports commentary round-up created by Dan Shanoff, there’s a very good reason: Quickish was acquired by USA Today Sports Media Group last summer. The Q, like Quickish (which stopped updating two weeks ago), is a stripped-down bloggy experience that also looks good on mobile browsers.

The Q is the latest new product from the sports guys, who also launched For The Win, a sports site with a social media spin. It also runs The Big Lead (acquired last year) and Sports On Earth, a joint venture with MLB Advanced Media.

Show tags
 
Join the 60,000 who get the freshest future-of-journalism news in our daily email.
The media becomes an activist for democracy
“We cannot be neutral about this, by definition. A free press that doesn’t agitate for democracy is an oxymoron.”
Embracing influencers as allies
“News organizations will increasingly rely on digital creators not just as amplifiers but as integral partners in storytelling.”
Action over analysis
“We’ve overindexed on problem articulation, to the point of problem admiring. The risk is that we are analyzing ourselves into inaction and irrelevance.”