What new tricks did the media play at the Rio Olympics?

The Olympic Games is not only a grand event for sports competition, but also a feast for the media. The endless stream of Olympic reports gives the media an excellent opportunity to boldly try new ways of reporting news.

The sports editor of the "New York Times" said that when reporting on sports events such as the Olympics and the World Cup, the media usually starts preparations months in advance before the event. Journalists will try to use as many different ways of expression as possible, so that different people can examine reports with different perspectives, experiences and interests. Diversity in coverage is key.

The same is true for the Rio Olympics. The media have used all kinds of tricks and methods in front of this grand event.

"The New York Times"

Panorama picture text message interaction, combining visualization and socialization

The game in which Usain Bolt defended his three consecutive 100-meter championships It was thrilling: at first he fell behind his opponent. However, at about 60 meters, the situation reversed and the trapeze man was already in the forefront.

In order to show in detail how Bolt won this game, the New York Times adopted a panoramic view, breaking down every second of the race to show readers, and the panorama It is mobile-friendly, which means that users can also see this detailed image on mobile devices. Users can see how the game is played by swiping the screen on mobile and computer.

From all aspects, this panorama can explain Bolt's victory process more clearly and intuitively than a traditional 700-word article. This choice of the New York Times is not unexpected. In recent years, visual methods such as pictures have become more and more popular among the media. Intuitive presentation methods are easier to attract the audience's attention and make it easier for the audience to understand the content of the report. It can be seen that in the future, visual methods will is increasingly being used.

The New York Times also tried to update users through text messages during the game: Sam Manchester, the sports editor of the New York Times, said that he would send game updates to readers. However, this update is not an ordinary one. news feed.

Manchester plans to add a human touch to the updates three to four times a day, choosing snapshots, GIFs, emoticons and personal conversations to update game news. This kind of personalized text messages may bring a different interactive experience to event reporting, which also means that the boundaries between news and social interaction are blurring. This is also proved by Facebook's previous increase in the priority of the news algorithm shared by relatives and friends. Communication is an important characteristic of news, and today as social communication becomes increasingly developed, the media has to consider the socialization path of news.

"Washington Post"

Robots are used to report and focus on niche events

"Washington Post" began to use robots to report on European and Olympic Games, strategic strategy Jeremy Gilbert, director of the department, said: "We are not trying to replace reporters with robots, but we want to allow reporters to have time to do more impactful news."

Heliograf was developed by the "Washington Post" A tool that can automatically write news. It can use data and ready-made templates to generate news. The generated content includes medal lists, event schedules, competition results, etc. These stories will be added to the main event coverage blog along with articles written by Washington Post sports reporters.

It is nothing new for robots to enter sports news reports. Sports reports and financial reports are to some extent the most operable types of robot news reports.

In this year’s Olympic coverage, “Today’s Toutiao” also used the robot Xiaomingbot to report news. It can be expected that in the future, the application of robot news in the field of sports news will become more and more popular, and sports reporters can concentrate on launching in-depth and exclusive reports.

Some events in the Olympic Games lack widespread awareness and can only be exposed in the media during the Olympic Games, which compete every four years. So while handball has its fans, the media assumes that most viewers don't follow the game closely.

In order to make the audience aware of such niche events, the Washington Post uses a pie chart to compare the number of facilities and venues for various sports, thereby drawing people's attention to niche events. This focus on niche sports also reflects the different Olympic reporting style of The Washington Post.

"The Guardian"

Push and podcast, linking offline

In the past few months, "The Guardian" has been experimenting with push, and now " The Guardian began to use the Olympics as a perfect opportunity to conduct experiments, pushing daily gold medal standings, polls, quizzes, etc., and even pushed the results of a specific country. Users can log in and choose to obtain medal information about a specific country. As long as the country wins any medals, the Guardian will push it to the user. In this way, the Guardian emphasized the relevance of its Olympic coverage and strengthened readers' demand for its coverage.

The Guardian also developed an interactive podcast RioRun combining online and offline activities to encourage users to walk or run the Rio Marathon distance during the Olympics. , "Guardian" reporters will share interesting stories about Rio and the Olympics, and provide running advice.

As the Guardian puts it: "We will follow the Rio Marathon and take you on an audio journey. What you hear will depend on how far you run, How fast you run. At key moments in the marathon, the distance you run opens up new audio segments, so the further you run, the more you hear.” The Guardian links offline events with reporting. Together, add Olympic sports elements to make the podcast more interesting.

Interesting data: China's Olympic Games in Rio

The implication of the "first gold medal complex"

Every year, China's first gold medal in the Olympic Games will become the focus of Chinese people's attention. This year is no exception.

Data show that from August 6 to August 8, from "aiming" to "swimming" to "shooting", the popularity trend of "first gold" experienced four high points: The first high point was when Yi Siling and Du Li were in the finals (the first gold medal for the first time); );

The third high point was when Zhang Mengxue won the first gold medal ("shooting" the first gold medal);

The fourth high point was when the Chinese team won the first gold medal the next morning , the media reported on a large scale that the popularity of first gold continued to rise, and then quickly cooled down.

But in addition to this year’s first gold complex, more rational elements have been added. There was encouragement and support for both the gold medal players and the non-gold medal players.

The data shows that users expressed encouragement and approval for "Du Li and Yi Siling won the silver and bronze on August 6" and "Zhang Mengxue won the first gold medal on August 7", among which "Proud", "good job", "Chinese girl", etc. have become hot comments to evaluate the similarities between the two. As for Du Li and Yi Siling's failure to win the first gold medal, the most common words were positive comments such as "not a subordinate" and "tried their best".

Data portraits of peak matchups

For some focused peak matchups, Toutiao used big data to analyze both sides, including user groups, keywords, etc.

For example, on the eve of the final between Ma Long and Zhang Jike, big data showed everyone the focus of this match in advance - the "not awake" Zhang Jike and the "national table tennis captain" Ma Long.

The men’s basketball team lost, and Yi Jianlian took the blame

The Chinese men’s basketball team led by Yi Jianlian suffered a five-game losing streak in the Olympics. Although Yi Jianlian played a key and core role in the game, the loss of Chinese basketball is still disappointing. Data shows that every time the Chinese men's basketball team loses a game, Chinese people's support for Yi Jianlian drops.

New "gods" and "goddess"

Beautiful faces, perfect lines, vivid athleticism, and various eye-catching elements possessed by athletes, It will become the focus of everyone's attention both inside and outside the stadium. At every Olympic Games, popular gods and goddesses are born. These are the faces that get the most attention at the Rio Olympics.

Starting from the opening ceremony of the Olympic Games on August 7, Toutiao will publish an Olympic big data report every day based on the Olympic data on that day, sorting out and taking stock of the hot spots inside and outside the stadium that day:

Daily Hottest - Tracking of daily Olympic events: the most watched events, countries, hot words and popular news;

Who loves to watch the Olympics - a portrait of the people who follow the Olympics : The province, city, gender, and age that are most concerned about the Olympics that day;

Focus on hot topics or athletes who are about to win gold medals - such as Sun Yang, Wu Minxia, ??Deng Wei, etc., including which age, gender, and region Pay the most attention to them, as well as the adjectives, titles, etc. most related to them;

Peak showdown - compare the two sides of the upcoming gold medal competition: such as Ding Ning & Li Xiaoxia, Ma Long & Zhang Jike, compare and pay attention to them Differences in portraits of people and differences in their evaluations;

Easter egg category - new content based on public opinion hot spots: such as "National Husband" on the 11th, about famous male athletes and national husbands among Olympic athletes Sorted by relevance.

"Beijing Youth Daily", "Southern Metropolis Daily", "Guangzhou Daily", "Yangcheng Evening News", "Xiaoxiang Morning News", "Chengdu Commercial Daily", "Chongqing Morning News", "Jiangnan Evening News", "Chinese Business News", "Straits Metropolis Daily" "Wenzhou Metropolis Daily", "Yanzhao Metropolis Daily" and other newspapers, TV stations such as Henan TV, Shandong TV, Anhui TV, BTV News, Hubei Comprehensive Channel and other TV channels, Shanghai Observation, Zhejiang Daily Weibo, Ningxia TV Weibo and other new The media are all testing the waters of Olympic data news.

Artificial intelligence and data drive will increasingly be involved in the reporting of news events. Robot writing has already played a role in vertical news reports such as sports and finance. Data journalism has also become a news form that deeply integrates big data and news after computer-assisted news.