Buffalo news is one of the leading newspapers circulated in the Buffalo NY and Niagara Falls Metropolitan region. The Buffalo News was found in 1873 by Edward Hubert Butler Sr and was initially started as a Sunday newspaper. The Buffalo News has been three time Pulitzer Prize winner and was a nominated finalist on four times. It has won numerous statewide awards, in competition with the New York City papers among other renowned newspapers in the market (Buffalonews.com). Buffalo.com was launched in 1999 and it has been one of the busiest websites in the Western New York area. Some of the entities of buffalo.com include shopbuffalo.com, buffalobrides.com, buffalocars, sweetfind.com, homefinder extra, buffalo.com’s petplace and buffalo job finder. The Buffalo News holds a strong position in the print and online news market in the Western New York area. Buffalonews.com is the website of the newspaper and this is where the readers can promptly catch the latest news.
The newspaper has a special section dedicated to sports like every renowned newspaper in the market. The sports section covers local, regional and national sports events and athletes. The Buffalo News sports section covers 120 high schools and about 2,400 of their teams, more than 10 colleges and about 150 of their teams and also the Olympics, NFL, NBA, NHL and MLB. Other sports that the newspaper covers are fishing, auto racing, horse racing, hunting, racket sports, running, skiing and boating (Buffalonews.com). The sports section is categorized into subtopics such as Sabres & NHL, Bills and NFL, Colleges, High Schools, Other sports, Columns, Blogs, Scores and 24 hour Sports Wire. The NHL and NFL sections are dedicated to Hockey and Football news only. Colleges and High School news sections are dedicated to all sports in high school and colleges. The columns include special report by the sports’ reports at Buffalo News and they express their opinion on the hottest trends in sports news. The blogs sections of Buffalo.com gives the readers a chance to connect with each other through comments and express their opinions about latest sports events. The blogs dedicated to their hockey and football teams are called Sabres Edge and Billboard, respectively. The website of Buffalo news also has featured video that appear either as a part of a news article or as a standalone news clipping. The latest sports videos on the website are about the performance of Sabre this season and the punishment NFL gave to New Orleans Saint’s.
One of the hottest news on Buffalo News was published on 21 March, 2012. The news was about NFL team New Orleans coach Payton being suspended for the season this year. The same team’s former defensive coordinator Gregg Williams is also banned from the league indefinitely because of the team's bounty placing allegations that targeted opposing players. The general manager of New Orleans, Mickey Loomis, is also suspended for the first eight regular-season games of 2012, and assistant coach Joe Vitt for the first six games. The Saints are to bear the fine of $500,000 and forfeit second-round draft picks this year and in 2013 because of the same issue (Buffalonews.com). This is one of the harshest punishments that NFL has given for such an instance. The incidence has shaken up the football fans. According to the news articles on Buffalo.com among other new sources, the New Orleans team was involved in given bounty for opposing players. The bounty involves giving money for injuring the opposing players. Many players on the New Orleans team would be under investigation because of this incidence. The bounty was placed on four quarter backs of opposing teams; Brett Favre, Cam Newton, Aaron Rodgers and Kurt Warner (Buffalonews.com). The sports reporter, Mark Gaughan, at Buffalo News has expressed his opinion on the issue as, “The Saints have the misfortune of getting caught while the NFL is in a sensitive position on player safety. The league is faced with a bunch of lawsuits from former players whose bodies are broken down and damaged from concussions. Goodell took advantage of a perfect opportunity to lay down the law” (Buffalonews.com)
There are several articles on the above mentioned incidence related to Saint’s New Orleans. There are many blog articles where NFL fans are expressing their opinion on the subject. The column writers are expressing their view point on the news item as well. The punishment given to this NFL team has stirred many debates and people are reacting in different ways about it. Some of the people feel that NFL has made the right decision in suspending the higher ups of the Saint’s team, whereas, others feel that the punishment given to the team is too much and they should take it down a couple of notches. This issue has raised a concern for ethics in the sports teams today. Relying on unethical and illegal practices such as bounty placing is highly unethical and frowned upon. The fans of the Saint’s team are taken aback by the revelations. There will be further investigation on team members in the bounty placing incident. The Buffalo News is covered the story extensively and the updates are being posted very frequently.
The sports section of Buffalo News has a large number of news items that are about signing up the NFL players. The main focus lies on the players that Buffalo Bills has signed up and there also news items about other signing up of other players such as Tim Tebow being signed up by the Jets. There is also a link that the visitors can click on the website Buffalonews.com that they would be taken to the news archive. The news archive is also filled with Bills news and has intricate details about the players and every move of the team. One of the news articles published on 16 March 2012 is about how Ralph Wilson, the owner of Bills team is happy about being able to sign Mario Williams, the star defensive end (Buffalonews.com). The news items on Buffalo.com mostly have pictures of the players involved. In this news item, there was a picture of Ralph Wilson and the General Manager of Bills Buffalo, Buddy Nix. One of the biggest news that is being talked about on The Buffalo News is about Mario Williams signing for the Buffalo Bills. This might prove to be a turning point for Bills performance at football. This is very exciting news for the Bills fans and The Buffalo news has taken this opportunity to connect with their sports readers and provide as many news pieces on this topic as possible. The newspaper is filled with news about Mario Williams signing up for the Buffalo Bills. One of the columns written by their news sports columnist, Bucky Gleason, focuses on the facts and impacts of this event. “Bills fans can spend the rest of the offseason digesting the fact that Williams signed a six-year contract for $100 million with incentives, with $51 million guaranteed, after the Bills courted him, or cornered him, for three days” (Buffalonews.com).
Another very important sports section of the newspaper is the NHL section which focuses on Hockey. They extensively cover the local news about Sabres, the Buffalo Hockey team. The hockey season is on and the national teams are competing with each other. The Buffalo News provides detailed and comprehensive coverage on hockey, with a special focus on the matches played by Sabres. The main similarity between the football and hockey sections of the newspapers is that they have very close and detailed coverage on the local teams. Anything that the Bills and Sabres do becomes news and it helps the newspaper provide a personalized experience to its readers. The NHL section is filled with news about Sabres not performing as expected at the hockey season this year. In one of the articles written by John Vogl on the 18 March, 2012, he has expressed deep concern about the team’s performance this season. The article’s title is “Sabres has little room for failure” which depicts the position of the team. According to the article by John Vogl, “The Sabres' lineup is littered with players missing opportunities. Ville Leino has found the net in just one of the last 22 games. Thomas Vanek has four goals in 28 games. Patrick Kaleta has gone 19 games without a goal. Cody Hodgson doesn't have a point in his 10 games with Buffalo. Derek Roy has one goal in nine games. On the back end, defenseman Jordan Leopold has only one goal in 33 outings” (Buffalonews.com). The photograph of Lindy Ruff appeared in this news article.
As mentioned before, the hockey section of Buffalo News is filled with news about Sabres and the level of details is very similar to the ones in the football section for Bills. Some of the major new items include news about the performance of star players in the current hockey season. There is a news article on Buffalo News that talks about the performance of new players in the Sabres team. Marcus Foligno has been performing well for a rookie, according to the news item (Buffalonews.com). The news report includes the scores from his latest matches and his comments in interviews with the newspaper. This is similar to the performance articles about the Bills players in the football articles. This particular news article includes a picture of Marcus Foligno, among other players of the team. There is a separate column section for Sabres that features exclusive articles from the sports news reporters.
Two of the other sub sections in the sport’s section cover the news on local high school and college sports teams. One of the highlighted news on the website is about the women’s basketball team of St. Bonaventure University winning a game and making it to the top 16 teams in the tournament. There were no pictures in this news article. The comments sections in the local news give the readers an opportunity to congratulate their local teams and feel the connection with them. The sports section about colleges majorly covers the 4 big institutions in the area; University at Buffalo, Canisius, Niagara and St. Bonaventure. The users can click on the name of these universities to access exclusive content. Other local colleges are covered under the sports news too. It is noticeable that the news section on colleges has a mixture of all sports of sports with the focus on the sports team of four colleges mentioned above. Three main categories of sports covered for colleges are women’s basketball, men’s basketball and football.
The high school section of The Buffalo News recently covered news on Cardinal O’Hara girls team making it to the finals of high school basketball in New York. It is the only team that’s left in the competition, out of all the teams in Western Europe. This is a big event in the community and the local residents are very proud of this team. This news article was accompanied by a big photograph of the team. The high school section has designated space on the webpage for the day’s top local high school games. The main sports covered in the high school section are; football, boys soccer, girls soccer, boys volleyball, girls volleyball, boys cross country, girls cross country, field hockey, boys golf, girls, golf, girls tennis and swimming (Buffalonews.com). There is special space in each section for the latest scores of ongoing leading games such as NFL, NHL and MLB. These scores are promptly updated.
There is a special section on other sports that are not in the highlight. This section caters to the readers who want to keep a tab on the games that are not so popular in general. This category covered news on summer sports, golf, running, auto racing, horseracing and boxing among other sports. There was an interesting observation that Basketball was in the category of other sports. There is a special section dedicated to Bisons and Baseball. Another interesting section in The Buffalo News is the column by the sports reports at the company. They analyze the sports’ events and write a column about them. Most of the current articles in the column are about the recent events in the NHL, NFL and the win of Cardinal O’Hare, the local high school basketball team. The column section is interactive and there is room for the comments from readers. The column articles include the picture of the news reporter. The Buffalo News has incorporated options to share the news with social media. The readers can share the news via Facebook, twitter and emails. There is also a 24 hour sports wire section with a special section for NHL and NFL. The current news articles mainly focus on Sabres performance and are accompanied by the photographs with stills from the games.
The sports section of Buffalo News is highly personalized for audience in the Buffalo area. There is a special section for Bills which is the football team of Buffalo and Sabres which is the hockey team of Buffalo. There is extensive coverage on news related to Bills and Sabres. The newspaper dedicates resources and reporters to covering the news on both of these teams. The news articles vary from Bills signing new players to the new strategies that the team is planning to undertake. A developing news item in NFL is that Buffalo Bills signed a four year deal with Mark Anderson for $27.5 million (Buffalonews.com). There are extensive about the deal on the website of Buffalo.com. The newspaper has made sure to mention the comments of the player joining Buffalo, “"When you think of Buffalo you think of a nice, small blue collar town. The fans are great. When I was waiting at the airport I had fans coming up to me, a lot of fans with Buffalo Bills hats. A lot of them came up to me and asked about my free agent visit. I thought that was amazing that they keep up with everything that goes on around the league with this organization. I just love the whole college atmosphere and I feel that it's what you need. You need that type of support in order to be successful in this league" (Buffalonews.com)
Focusing on local news items signifies the commitment of the paper to community and also their focus on the target audience. The newspaper tries to personalize the newspaper for the region as much as they can. They include extensive local sports news, general news, classified and other sections in this newspaper. The Buffalo News has mastered the delicate balance of delivering local content mixed with other news. They strive to make the newspaper as personalized to the area as possible. This is one of the key contributing factors to the success of local newspapers that they provide content that the national newspapers do not. As mentioned above the sports section is highly personalized to cover local teams’ news and it gives the readers an opportunity to bond with the newspaper as their own. One of the biggest differences among the articles in different sports subsections is that the articles on prominent games such as NHL and NFL, almost always include a photograph but the high school or college articles usually don’t. Another difference that I noticed was that the number of specialized news reports is more in hockey than football.
In conclusion I would like to point out that The Buffalo News is one of the best examples of a successful local newspaper. Its success is attributed to its personalization of content for the Western New York region. The reason for the newspaper’s success is its mission of providing news and information to the community they serve and report it honestly, accurately and fairly (Buffalonews.com) the mission might be one of the reasons of the newspaper’s layout as a community paper. The articles in the sports section mainly focus on the local teams and there is extensive focus on local college and high school teams as well. The sports news reporters are well qualified and overall the newspaper has performed very well over all for the past few decades. The representation of the news articles is personalized and comprehensive, usually accompanied by photographs. There are news reporters that specialize in their certain areas and they follow a certain pattern of writing that is representative of the newspaper’s style. The success of the newspaper is depicted by the four Pulitzer Prizes it has won and has been a finalist four times.
Works Cited
"Saints express regret; ask for fans' support."Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 21 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
Gaughan, Mark. "Bills sign DE Anderson."Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 21 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
Gaughan, Mark . "Bills sign productive pass rusher in Anderson." Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 21 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
Gaughan, Mark. "Wilson's in a jovial mood."Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 16 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
Vogl, John. "Sabres have little room for failure."Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 18 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
McShea, Keisha. "Cardinal O'Hara girls make first trip to the Fed ." Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 22 March 2012. Web. 21 Mar 2012.
Gleason, Bucky. "Western New York becomes part of Super Mario's world." Buffalonews.com. Buffalo News, 15 March 2012. Web. 22 Mar 2012.
