Earlier this month, ESPN televised a high school basketball game between the alma mater of LeBron James and the current school of LeBron James Jr., otherwise known as “Bronny.” The game — and the hysteria around it, including the massive potential social media relevance for anyone shooting it into feeds everywhere — earned coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN itself, and a horde of credentialed media members.
Just a high school freshman, Bronny is already a one-name wonder in sports — on the same sports-celebrity trajectory as Serena, Tiger and, yes, LeBron.
Bronny also represents one of the biggest growth areas of sports media heading into 2020: high school basketball.
Bronny is his own beat:
What makes Bronny such an appealing investment for a media organization — beyond the attention he commands — is that as a freshman, he theoretically has more than 100 games remaining in his high school career, between his school team, his spring/summer appearances on Nike’s high-profile EYBL circuit, and other big events where he is sure to be the star. (Notably, most of the 2019 EYBL season was streamed on Twitch, accessible to all.)
It’s easy to imagine a world where sports media networks are shelling out tens of millions in rights fees to showcase Bronny’s games. In fact, I’d argue that it would make both editorial and business sense — for ESPN, DAZN (the most prominent sports media “direct-to-consumer” platform, which made huge strides in 2019), Amazon (either Prime Video or Twitch), WarnerMedia’s upcoming HBO Max, NBC’s Peacock OTT service, Verizon’s Yahoo Sports or even LeBron’s Uninterrupted — to tap into high school hoops star power and social relevance in a media landscape where NBA and college rights are both stratospheric and locked in for years with incumbent distributors.
(There’s a fascinating and important sidebar about what Bronny and other high school players should get from these content businesses built on their name, image, and social currency — particularly given that Bronny plays at a school in California, the epicenter of the burgeoning name/image/likeness compensation debate, taking place now at the college level. But we can save that topic for Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2021.)
It isn’t just about Bronny and the billions on the line in the battle between streaming platforms. High school basketball is designed for — and consumed by — the younger audience coveted by incumbent media companies and brands. High school basketball (and other high school sports) offer opportunities at the regional and local level for media organizations to engage with a new audience, test social-native coverage plans, and even dabble in live games (or, at the very least, more in-depth high school coverage) as part of their own subscription packages. Every region has players to showcase and social currency to experiment with. There are tons of high school players that your audience — particularly your younger audience — wants to engage with, including a couple of superstars on the girls’ side like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. (And, coming soon, Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gigi who already draws breathless coverage of her own.)
If professional media operators don’t take advantage of the opportunity, high schools will take a cue from college and pro teams — and all those pro-am videographers on their baselines Friday nights — and create their own direct-to-consumer offerings, while well-funded youth-media startups stake wider claims on attention and relevance. It doesn’t need to be oppositional; there’s a huge range of opportunities for media orgs of every size and ambition. I recently volunteered some time to help a civic group organizing high school student journalists in the Chicago exurbs to cover the local teams — boys and girls, varsity and JV — in more depth, which both serves the community and bolsters the students’ journalism experience.
Heading into 2020, the DNA of intensive high school basketball coverage on Instagram, YouTube, and other non-traditional platforms is classic “shoe leather” observation, combined with modest cost requirements, new distribution platforms, and a seemingly limitless appetite from fans. 2020 won’t just be the year of Bronny — it’ll be the year when media organizations across the spectrum should invest further in the opportunity to experiment across the high school space.
Dan Shanoff is longtime sports-media content strategy and development executive.
Earlier this month, ESPN televised a high school basketball game between the alma mater of LeBron James and the current school of LeBron James Jr., otherwise known as “Bronny.” The game — and the hysteria around it, including the massive potential social media relevance for anyone shooting it into feeds everywhere — earned coverage from The New York Times, The Washington Post, ESPN itself, and a horde of credentialed media members.
Just a high school freshman, Bronny is already a one-name wonder in sports — on the same sports-celebrity trajectory as Serena, Tiger and, yes, LeBron.
Bronny also represents one of the biggest growth areas of sports media heading into 2020: high school basketball.
Bronny is his own beat:
What makes Bronny such an appealing investment for a media organization — beyond the attention he commands — is that as a freshman, he theoretically has more than 100 games remaining in his high school career, between his school team, his spring/summer appearances on Nike’s high-profile EYBL circuit, and other big events where he is sure to be the star. (Notably, most of the 2019 EYBL season was streamed on Twitch, accessible to all.)
It’s easy to imagine a world where sports media networks are shelling out tens of millions in rights fees to showcase Bronny’s games. In fact, I’d argue that it would make both editorial and business sense — for ESPN, DAZN (the most prominent sports media “direct-to-consumer” platform, which made huge strides in 2019), Amazon (either Prime Video or Twitch), WarnerMedia’s upcoming HBO Max, NBC’s Peacock OTT service, Verizon’s Yahoo Sports or even LeBron’s Uninterrupted — to tap into high school hoops star power and social relevance in a media landscape where NBA and college rights are both stratospheric and locked in for years with incumbent distributors.
(There’s a fascinating and important sidebar about what Bronny and other high school players should get from these content businesses built on their name, image, and social currency — particularly given that Bronny plays at a school in California, the epicenter of the burgeoning name/image/likeness compensation debate, taking place now at the college level. But we can save that topic for Nieman Lab Predictions for Journalism 2021.)
It isn’t just about Bronny and the billions on the line in the battle between streaming platforms. High school basketball is designed for — and consumed by — the younger audience coveted by incumbent media companies and brands. High school basketball (and other high school sports) offer opportunities at the regional and local level for media organizations to engage with a new audience, test social-native coverage plans, and even dabble in live games (or, at the very least, more in-depth high school coverage) as part of their own subscription packages. Every region has players to showcase and social currency to experiment with. There are tons of high school players that your audience — particularly your younger audience — wants to engage with, including a couple of superstars on the girls’ side like Paige Bueckers and Azzi Fudd. (And, coming soon, Kobe Bryant’s daughter Gigi who already draws breathless coverage of her own.)
If professional media operators don’t take advantage of the opportunity, high schools will take a cue from college and pro teams — and all those pro-am videographers on their baselines Friday nights — and create their own direct-to-consumer offerings, while well-funded youth-media startups stake wider claims on attention and relevance. It doesn’t need to be oppositional; there’s a huge range of opportunities for media orgs of every size and ambition. I recently volunteered some time to help a civic group organizing high school student journalists in the Chicago exurbs to cover the local teams — boys and girls, varsity and JV — in more depth, which both serves the community and bolsters the students’ journalism experience.
Heading into 2020, the DNA of intensive high school basketball coverage on Instagram, YouTube, and other non-traditional platforms is classic “shoe leather” observation, combined with modest cost requirements, new distribution platforms, and a seemingly limitless appetite from fans. 2020 won’t just be the year of Bronny — it’ll be the year when media organizations across the spectrum should invest further in the opportunity to experiment across the high school space.
Dan Shanoff is longtime sports-media content strategy and development executive.
Matt DeRienzo Local broadcasters begin to fill the gaps left by newspapers
S. Mitra Kalita The race to 2021
Gordon Crovitz Fighting misinformation requires journalism, not secret algorithms
Bill Adair A Nobel Prize, a Brad Pitt film, and a Taylor Swift song
Whitney Phillips A time to question core beliefs
Victor Pickard We reclaim a public good
Cindy Royal Prepare media students for skills, not job titles
Irving Washington Leadership isn’t something you learn on the job
M. Scott Havens First-party data becomes media’s most important currency
Francesco Zaffarano TikTok without generational prejudice
Simon Galperin Journalism becomes more democratic
Steve Henn The dawning audio web
Jeremy Gilbert and Jarrod Dicker A call for collaboration between storytelling and tech
Monique Judge The year to organize, unionize, and fight
Elizabeth Hansen and Jesse Holcomb Local news initiatives run into a capital shortage
Felix Salmon Spotify launches a news channel
Jennifer Brandel A love letter from the year 2073
Nushin Rashidian Are platforms a bridge or a lifeline?
Joshua P. Darr All that campaign cash will make the media’s problems worse
Mira Lowe The year of student-powered journalism
Jeremy Olshan All journalism should be service journalism
Zizi Papacharissi A president leads, the press follows, reality fades
Kevin D. Grant The free press stands against authoritarians’ attacks on truth
Tonya Mosley The neutrality vs. objectivity game ends
Peter Bale Lies get further normalized
Mike Caulfield Native verification tools for the blue checkmark crowd
Seth C. Lewis 20 questions for 2020
Sara K. Baranowski A big year for little newspapers
Monica Drake A renewed focus on misinformation
Catalina Albeanu Rebuilding journalism, together
Linda Solomon Wood Everyone in your organization, moving toward a common goal
Carl Bialik Journalists will try running the whole shop
J. Siguru Wahutu Western journalists, learn from your African peers
Alexandra Borchardt Get out of the office and talk to people
Logan Molyneux and Shannon McGregor Think twice before turning to Twitter
Madelyn Sanfilippo and Yafit Lev-Aretz News coverage gets geo-fragmented
Candis Callison Taking a cue from Indigenous journalists on climate change
Rasmus Kleis Nielsen The business we want, not the business we had
Emily Withrow The year we kill the news article
Meg Marco Everything happens somewhere
Jakob Moll A slow-moving tech backlash among young people
Craig Newmark Formalizing newsrooms’ battle against disinformation
Cory Haik We’re already consuming the future of news — now we have to produce it
Juleyka Lantigua A changing industry amps up podcasters’ ambitions
Jim Brady We’ll complain about other people living in bubbles while ignoring our own
Ståle Grut OSINT journalism goes mainstream
Christa Scharfenberg It’s time to make journalism a field that supports and respects women
Tamar Charney From broadcast to bespoke
Josh Schwartz Publishers move beyond the metered paywall
Sue Robinson Campaign coverage as test bed for engagement experiments
Geneva Overholser Death to bothsidesism
Dannagal G. Young Let’s disrupt the logic that’s driving Americans apart
Sonali Prasad Climate change storytelling gets multidimensional
Rachel Davis Mersey The business of local TV news will enter its downward slide
Kerri Hoffman Opening closed systems
Helen Havlak Platforms shine a light on original reporting
Mario García Think small (screen)
Masuma Ahuja Slower, quieter, more measured and thoughtful
Sarah Schmalbach Journalist, quantify thyself
Moreno Cruz Osório In Brazil, collaboration in a time of state attacks
Julia B. Chan We 👏 take 👏 breaks 👏
Jake Shapiro Podcasting gets listener relationship management
Alana Levinson Brand-backed media gets another look
Nico Gendron Make better products if you want to reach Gen Z
Rachel Glickhouse Journalists get left behind in the industry’s decline
Stefanie Murray Charitable giving goes collaborative
Colleen Shalby Journalists become media literacy teachers
Brian Moritz The end of “stick to sports”
Nathalie Malinarich Betting on loyalty
Jonas Kaiser Russian bots are just today’s slacktivists
Hossein Derakhshan AI can’t conjure up an Errol Morris
Logan Jaffe You don’t need fancy tools to listen
Beena Raghavendran The year of the local engagement reporter
Richard Tofel A constraint of the reader-revenue model emerges
Laura E. Davis Know the context your journalism is operating within
Jeff Kofman Speed through technology
Joe Amditis Collaborative journalism takes its rightful place at the table
Rick Berke Incoming fire from both left and right
Doris Truong The year of radical salary transparency
Michael W. Wagner Increasingly fractured, but little bit deliberative
Heather Bryant Some kinds of journalism aren’t worth saving
Alfred Hermida and Mary Lynn Young The promise of nonprofit journalism
Cristina Kim Public media stops trying to serve “everybody”
Elizabeth Dunbar Frank talk, and then action
Tom Glaisyer Journalism can emerge newly vibrant and powerful
Talia Stroud The work of reconnecting starts November 4
John Keefe Journalism gets hacked
Carrie Brown-Smith Engaged journalism: It’s finally happening
Errin Haines Race and gender aren’t a 2020 story — they’re the story
Kourtney Bitterly Transparency isn’t just a desire, it’s an expectation
Lucas Graves A smarter conversation about how (and why) fact-checking matters
An Xiao Mina The Forum we wanted, the forum we got
Dan Shanoff Sports media enters the Bronny era
Fiona Spruill The climate crisis gets the coverage it deserves
Sarah Alvarez I’m ready for post-news
Jasmine McNealy A call for context
Bill Grueskin Our ethics codes get an overhaul
Kathleen Searles Pay more attention to attention
Joanne McNeil A return to blogs (finally? sort of?)
Ben Werdmuller Use the tools of journalism to save it
Mary Walter-Brown and Tristan Loper Power to the people (on your audience team)
Margarita Noriega The platforms try to figure out what to do with single-subject newsrooms
Joni Deutsch Podcasting unsilences the silent
Knight Foundation Five generations of journalists, learning from each other
Alice Antheaume Trade “politics” for “power”
Sarah Marshall The year to learn about news moments
Don Day Respect the non-paying audience
Brenda P. Salinas Treating MP3 files like text
Eric Nuzum Podcasting finally creates another mega-hit show
A.J. Bauer A fork in the road for conservative media
Pablo Boczkowski The day after November 4
John Garrett It’s the best time in a century to start a local news organization
Sarah Stonbely More people start caring about news inequality
Imaeyen Ibanga Let’s take it slow
Raney Aronson-Rath News deserts will proliferate — but so will new solutions
Meredith Artley Stronger solidarity among news organizations
Heidi Tworek The year of positive pushback
Matthew Pressman News consumers divide into haves and have-nots
Nicholas Jackson What’s left of local gets comfortable with reader support
Mariana Moura Santos The future of journalism is collaborative
Barbara Gray Join local libraries on the frontlines of civic engagement
Kristen Muller The year we operationalize community engagement
Lauren Duca The rise of the journalistic influencer
Ernie Smith The death of the industry fad
Rachel Schallom The value of push alerts goes beyond open rates
Anthony Nadler Clash of Clans: Election Edition
Greg Emerson News apps fall further behind