Dave Wilson of Cuyahoga Falls, former deputy copy desk chief and deputy metro editor at the Beacon Journal, and Cindy Robinson of Mogadore, a retail sales manager and local ad director, both started their new positions in December.
“I’m really excited about being here,” Wilson said. “We’ve been seeing for several years that the trend in
journalism, particularly in online journalism, is toward microreporting. And that’s what we do here at SportsInk.com. It’s true microjournalism.”“There are a lot of great stories that go untold in high school sports,” Wilson said. “We want to tell those stories, and tell them well, with the kind of attention the larger media can’t devote to high school sports.”
SportsInk.com., which focuses on high school sports in Summit and Medina counties, kicked off in the fall of 2009.
Robinson, a 2003 nominee for the James K. Batten Knight Ridder Excellence Award, was GM of Targeted Publications and helped spearhead bundled packages of print and online advertising for the Beacon Journal. She sees a tremendous niche market.
“Personally, I saw my kids' disappointment with the lack of local coverage of high school sports. This disappointment was echoed by their teammates, their coaches and their parents and crossed over to every sporting activity,” Robinson said. “At regional and state events, this sentiment was consistent with folks who lived in other parts of the state as well.
“In the business world, I knew from my relationships with local and regional businesses they were seeking a way to reach out to this age group and traditional methods were not providing desired results.
“SportsInk.om is the perfect venue for both. As a parent, I am excited because I can help to provide a local web site that offers ‘the inside story’ about our local high school athletes,” Robinson said. “As the sales manager, I can offer businesses a solution to their needs.”
SportsInk.com covers 35 high schools in 15 sports among five conferences in Summit and Medina counties. The site is owned by Sports Reporting Technologies LLC, an Akron , firm that developed the web site platform through which SportsInk.com operates.
According to President Angela Charles, SportsInk.com is the pilot site for what the company hopes to become a national effort. “We envision there being many SportsInk.coms across the country in areas that are underserved by existing media. Our business model is to provide an affordable platform to individual entrepreneurs, small newspapers and radio stations that want to provide comprehensive high school coverage, but lack the financial wherewithal for the required technology investment.”
Sports Reporting Technologies plans to begin licensing its SportSiteWare™ platform in 2010, she said.
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