Inside Sports Journalism: A Daily Bruin Editor’s Workflow for Covering UCLA Basketball
The purpose of this post is to explain the workflow of what it’s like to be a photo editor covering a typical UCLA basketball game for the DailyBruin all from a bedroom in Erie, Pensylvannia. The specifics of my experience are exclusive to the 2020–2021 season.
What’s the DailyBruin?
The DailyBruin is UCLA’s premiere independent student newspaper. They’ve won tons of awards and are considered to be the best student newspaper in the country #not biased.
Responsibilities
UCLA basketball is well-known and therefore receives more coverage than other sports. For a typical basketball game, we would produce a halftime Instagram post, a final Instagram post, a sports wrap, and a gallery. Each piece of content requires a photo.
All of the content published in this article is from an average regular season game — UCLA vs Washington.
Pre-game logistics
Ensure photographers have the proper gear. Work with sports writers to ensure press passes for the photographer are set. Hop on a 10-minute call to ensure they know where to get their press pass and go over any last-minute questions.
Halftime Instagram Post
The halftime Instagram post is a post on Instagram that tells social media followers the score of the game at halftime.
- Sports will recommend a player to post.
- During halftime, the photographer sends a raw file of any good photos they have with the player.
- I edit the photos from the photographer.
- I place the edited photo into a Photoshop template and update the score.
- The JPG image is sent to the social media department for posting.
End of Game
Two pieces of content to publish.
End of Game Wrap
Article written by the sports department at the end of the game. The turnaround time is less than 30 minutes.
- Sports will identify notable players 5–10 minutes before the game ends.
- Receive raw photo files of that particular player from the photographer.
- Edit key photos for publication in Photoshop.
- Provide JPEG images to the online team to be uploaded with articles on the online site.
Instagram Post
- Coordinate with the sports department to identify a notable player for a social media post 5–10 minutes before the game ends.
- Insert one photo into a Photoshop template, add the final score, and export it as a JPEG for the social media team to post on Instagram.
Gallery
The purpose of the gallery is to include additional photos that tell the story of the game.
The purpose of the gallery is to create a story of the game in photos. The turnaround time is 24 hours.
- Have photographers select 20 images immediately after the game for DB to edit.
- I will keep track of the game and identify any missed moments or opportunities not included in the photographer's photos to ensure a cohesive story.
- Daanish creates a Google doc for the photographer to write captions. Set a deadline for tomorrow mid-morning.
- Once the captions are written, I will review the captions first based on the AP Citation style.
- Send captions to sports. Sports reviews everything.
- Send social media captions to the social media team.
- Send the entire gallery to the copy desk for final review.
- Upload to online as soon as the copy gives the ok.
Social Media (post-post game)
A selection of 4 photos from the gallery will be posted on all of the Daily Bruin’s socials.
An additional selection of photos will be posted to the DailyBruin photo account. This is an additional account I created to bring more exposure to our photographers. For this particular game, I will write and edit the captions to be uploaded for this account.
Conclusion
This process allowed us to post content and cover an individual game really well, it would all be published within 24 hours which I think is a good turnaround.
Relevant Links
Check out more work related to the DailyBruin and stuff I worked on!
