Our local paper did what every other smaller, regional paper did and made a website. They weren\’t getting much traffic and coming from a long and may we add, proud history of local news, they we\’re exactly sure of how to make the jump to the web. They just knew they had to get there and pretty quickly. There was one online feature, however, that was very popular. 100K hits in no time from a pretty thinly produced online piece on local high school football. It\’s the only thing that really worked for them and they didn\’t know exactly how to take advantage of this accidental strike of online gold.

Fast forward a little bit and we have something even better, the Sports Channel on the Zipper smart phone app. This is really the direction we need to go for anything local and let\’s face it, a big part of our local is local sports. As much as I like the pro\’s, there\’s something very cool about going to a local high school football or basketball game. You might even know some of the kids playing pretty well. Extra bonus is the fact that they\’re not going to have a walk-out this season. Local sports is a big part of many people\’s universe and only so much of it ever gets covered in your newspaper or the nightly local news. That\’s sad. JV girls volleyball may not mean enough to the local newspaper or station but it sure means a lot to the player who\’s training and going all out for her favorite sport. Why should the local newspaper and station dictate what\’s important enough to cover. Isn\’t this the time of internet where the masses dictate what they get and everyone has a stage and or bully pulpit? We say yes, yes, and a resounding YES.

So how does the Sports Channel work on the Zipper app for both ITunes and Droid markets? It\’s simple and yet powerful. With the Zipper app for local news and gossip, you can narrow all the available Zips (posts about local news and gossip) according to pre-set channels. One of these channels is local. This means the Zipper app will automatically filter just the zips that relate to local sports news and gossip. How is this valuable? It could be a running play by play of the game you can attend because you\’re at work. How cool would that be? As each play occurs, someone watching would add a zip to the running thread to show what\’s going on. People can add pictures if they like and even video. How many times have you tried to find out who won a particular game. You can get a hold of your friends that played or were at the game. The school website hasn\’t been updated yet. It\’s ridiculous not to be able to get this kind of information in real time. Bring in the zipper. Narrow the channel to sports and maybe even preset locations you set up for High School Football as an example. There\’s a constant stream of information there with everything related to your high school football team including…tonight\’s final score and even all the stats that went towards that score.

There\’s also local sports news and gossip on players. Were there injuries. Did someone get benched. Who had food poisoning and had to sit out? Why did that brawl break out over by the locker room. What do you mean there\’s a star recruit from another school who just transferred? it goes on and on and the Zipper with its Sports channel is the just the place to report on it and find it right now!

Dennis Jarvis writes extensively about local news and local gossip smart phone apps.