From this year, live blogging is a required part of the sports journalism portfolio at the University of Salford. Here's how it came about, and what students are producing.
When we surveyed UK journalism students and early-career reporters for our Next-Gen Journalism report, one finding was hard to ignore. Many of them felt underprepared in precisely the skills newsrooms now hire for: live reporting, digital tools, analytics.
It's an odd gap. Live coverage is standard practice at almost every major publisher, and it's often the first thing a junior reporter gets handed on a Saturday afternoon. But for a lot of graduates, their first live blog is the one they file on their first shift, in front of a real audience, with no practice run.
That gap is why we've partnered with the University of Salford. From this year, live blogging sits alongside feature writing and commentary as a required element of students' sports journalism portfolios - and they're building it on the same software used in more than 450 newsrooms.
"Liveblogging has become a core component of modern sports and news reporting, widely used by major publishers, so we felt it was important to embed it into our curriculum," said Philo Holland, Lecturer in Journalism at the University of Salford and Senior Broadcast Journalist at BBC Radio 5 Live. "Tickaroo is giving our students the ability to engage with a live online audience and experience the excitement and pressure of publishing stories in real time. It encourages a more creative, conversational style of storytelling that better reflects how audiences consume news today."
Using Tickaroo's platform, students can create interactive live coverage enriched with player stat cards, social media embeds, video, photography and custom team graphics. The software is also used during university news days and in real-world reporting opportunities, including local elections, Varsity sporting events, and coverage of local sports teams.
The university selected Tickaroo for its ease of use, multimedia capabilities and seamless integration with existing publishing platforms. The software has already received positive feedback from industry professionals visiting the programme, including Jonathan Jurejko from BBC Sport, who spoke with students about live minute-by-minute reporting techniques and praised how quickly they were able to engage with the platform.
"Tickaroo has all the bells and whistles needed to create visually exciting and dynamic sports and news coverage," added Holland. "The software is intuitive, easy to learn and supported by a highly responsive technical team, which has helped students quickly gain confidence in live reporting."
Newsrooms hire for these skills. Live coverage is everyday practice for journalists, and knowing the tools is part of the job description.
Students can see that too. In our survey, 64% said more engaging storytelling formats are key to rebuilding audience trust and news consumption. They know where the industry is going. They just want a chance to practise before it counts.
"Today's journalists need to be confident publishing in fast-moving, audience-driven environments," says Naomi Owusu, our co-founder and CEO. "We believe it's incredibly important to give students direct experience with the liveblogging workflows and multimedia storytelling techniques that are increasingly central to modern journalism."
Salford isn't the only place we're doing this. We run similar partnerships with the University of Sheffield and the University of Lancashire, and we've supported initiatives including the University of Lancashire's Journalism Innovation and Leadership Programme. We also partner with Newsrewired so that aspiring journalists can cover the conference through a live blog and gain real-wold experience.
Teaching journalism? If you're running a course and want your students working in a live newsroom environment, we'd like to hear from you.
Running a newsroom? If you just want to see what our live blogging software does in practice, we'll show you.