When a col­lege news­pa­per makes the tran­si­tion to pull a Web site out of the dark dank closet and make it an inte­gral part of their report­ing, cer­tain tools may be uti­lized to improve cer­tain types of reporting.

www.coveritlive.com is a free ser­vice that allows play-by-play updates with the ease of Twit­ter but the sophis­ti­ca­tion of a cha­t­room. It allows for inter­ac­tion in the form of ques­tions and com­ments posed by the users, the addi­tion of media includ­ing sound, video and pho­tos to be quickly and eas­ily uploaded and best of all, it’s free and easy to use.

The Fer­ris State Torch just used this source for the last two nights to give game action as the Bull­dogs took on the Red­Hawks of the Uni­ver­sity of Miami Ohio in Divi­sion I hockey. A big deal for many and noth­ing that the paper would wait for the games to fin­ish to report on.

Heavy adver­tis­ing or pro­mo­tion wasn’t spent on the use of this new fea­ture on the Torch’s site, as its use­ful­ness had not yet been deter­mined, but after two suc­cess­ful games and a fair bit of use, I can say with con­fi­dence that it has improved the news expe­ri­ence for some of our readers.

Do you use any other pro­grams that may be ben­e­fi­cial to “up-to-the-minute” report­ing? Is twit­ter enough? What if you report some­thing wrong?

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