FINAL PROJECT PROPOSAL

Format & Audience

The format for our final project is to create a blog using blogspot.com (emilyandlorelei@blogspot.com) as an interactive site to post our research discoveries, and allowing others to access our findings. This blog will enable us to post information that is relevant to our culture, which will complement our topic as it is another means of providing sports information via the internet.
Our intended audience for this blog are individuals looking to become more aware of how the internet has impacted the sports industry by providing more accessible information. With the high percentage of the population shifting to online communities, the sports industry is able to tailor their sites to provide accurate material in order to remain relevant and competitive. By using an online community in the form of a blog, we hope to inform our audience of this trend and connect to individuals who are accustomed to gathering their sports information in this manner.

Purpose

The purpose of our project is to demonstrate how the internet has revolutionized the public’s access to sports with our specific focus being on hockey. News print and television are no long the most efficient means of obtaining sports information. Due to our culture’s increased reliance on technology, people are turning to the internet for up to the minute data that print media cannot provide.

Subject & Sources

Through this project we hope to challenge ourselves to use new mediums to reach the public. On our main page, for example, we hope to upload a video introducing ourselves and our mission statement, which will bring a more interactive and personal approach to our topic. We are working on featuring an interview with a professional involved in the industry that will offer a sense of credibility to our research. We are awaiting a reply from a member of the Manitoba Moose organization who is responsible for overseeing the website and, therefore, will be able to provide insight as to how hockey organizations are utilizing the power of the internet. Our goal is to include some of this insight on our website to enlighten others from a professional standpoint.
We also hope to explore other professional websites, such as TSN.ca and sidcrosby.blogspot.com in order demonstrate the different styles of communication that can be used to access and share information. By doing this we will show our audience the diversity in the information presented and how each site is able to tailor to different needs, whether it be individuals looking for entertainment, or individuals who merely want to be informed.
Over and above interviews with media professionals, we plan to use the University of Winnipeg’s online databases to obtain statistics and information on the expansion of sports technology. We also plan on referring to websites that feature the use of up-to-date activities, such as boxscores, video streams and game analysis.
Our blog will also include popular sports links that will serve as a map to link our audience to professional websites. These websites will include TSN.ca, moosehockey.com, nhl.com, hockeycanada.ca, and local community sites such as mjhlhockey.ca.

Timeline

Knowing that the final due date is April 7, this will serve as our tentative schedule:
During the week of February 22-February 28 we will post our project proposal on the webct discussion board, as well as on our blog. Also this week, we have emailed Eric Postma from the Manitoba Moose hoping to schedule an interview at his earliest convenience, which we will post soon after. We will begin our blog by posting updates on the Team Canada Olympic hockey games this week.
By March 3, we will have our video introduction posted on our homepage. This will feature our focus for the site and our goals for the project.
We anticipate that the week of March 8-14 will be a bit slower in regards to our final project, as we will be focusing on our webct discussion. Yet, we are still aiming to link our discussion on digital advertising and how it can tie into sports media, and we will then include this on our blog. During this week we will be posting another video of our progress and any relevant stories that appear in the news.
Since this is a blog, we will be continually updating its information in order to keep our audience informed of our progress. The rest of the information we hope to post on our blog, as we come across it. We feel like this flexibility will leave room for us to cover emerging stories.
By the first week of April we will solidify the information we have by editing the blog’s content, so that it can be viewed as a respective source of information. Out goal is that by the due date our blog will demonstrate everything we have learned through the process of this final project and, more generally, by taking this course.