When I first came to Bakersfield in 2012, I was introduced to a grumpy veteran sportswriter named Mike Griffith, who was a second-generation journalist for The Californian. He was first introduced to drag racing as a kid by his father, who was a longtime editor at The Californian, and that proved to be a life-changing moment for Griffith.
From the late 1970s to now Griffith still writes about the motorsports scene in Kern County. He covered the heyday of Indy Car champion Rick Mears, who would win four Indianapolis 500 titles in his career, to the start of NASCAR champion Kevin Harvick's career. Along the way, Griff would also cover every March Meet, once the biggest independent event on the NHRA season, and that's where I first got to work with him.
To many in Bakersfield motorsports is a really big deal and we wanted to further explore the niche of the audience. So in 2014, we launched the Bako Motorsports Power Hour as a partnership with Budweiser, Auto Club Famoso Raceway, Bakersfield Speedway and Kern County Raceway Park. The show has been a modest success but we worked hard to connect the audience to multiple channels, including video and print.
Last year, we introduced the All-Area Motorsports Team, which was sponsored by convenience store chain Fastrip, and it proved to be one of the more popular sections we produced in 2015. Unfortunately, this year's section didn't receive the sort of financial backing to make it a regular section, but its social media reach is interesting.
When Mike posted the page via Facebook it attracted more than 4,000 people -- twice the size of The Bako Motorsports Facebook page's audience. Of course, it's difficult to analyze the impact of the print readership, but it's an interesting case study about doing things on an annual basis as a way of attracting a one-time audience. Readership surveys suggest that interest in motorsports ranked poorly. but we did see some positive audience development numbers based off an analysis of bakersfield.com readers conducted through an American Press Institute study.
The thing I like about the All-Area team is that it puts 60 people into the newspaper and continues to make the newspaper indispensable. Hopefully, it's something that the track's see value in but it also points to the ongoing issue if those institutions still need us? In the old days, newspaper coverage was vital to any sports operation. Today, that is arguable. That's an unfortunate state, but I still believe there are plenty of people who value the independent coverage a newspaper brings to its community.
An All-Area team is one of those differentiators.
In the end, the reaction to the section was well received on Facebook, and here's a look at the response:
No comments:
Post a Comment