What is Lawrence Sports
Lawrence Sports is a new breed of sports publications that will cover high school and collegiate athletics, starting right here in the Douglas County. We want to establish strong local coverage for student-athletes, and reverse the ever-shrinking efforts of traditional media.
We know there are a lot of parents who are accustomed to receiving a newspaper. They want to save a copy of the sports section when their kid is highlighted for athletic accomplishments. But there’s a big problem with that: Newspapers everywhere have shrunk so much that more likely than not, most kids will never get that recognition.
The quality and scope of our coverage will far exceed anything that local newspapers have ever been able to produce because our dedication and our focus will be entirely on these student-athletes. Our online site will be fresh and comprehensive. We will capture and showcase the inspiring and empowering moments that these young athletes and their families will want to remember forever.
We also have a solution to offer a tangible keepsake to replace those important newspaper clippings: We will produce three postseason magazines for fall, winter and spring sports at each of our schools. These will act as sports yearbooks, filled with player profiles, postseason awards and photos from the season.
What this fundraiser will do:
• Help us put our best foot forward, starting with coverage of this fall sports season.
• Help us pay reporters and interns for their work.
• Help us equip our staff with the tech they need to deliver the level of sports coverage that our communities deserve.
How we’ll sustain it:
• We’ll keep overhead low — we’re avoiding unnecessary expenses, such as a centralized office, because our reporters will spend most of their time out in the field covering the athletes.
• We’ll seek out advertisers who believe in the importance of high school sports and want to support our mission of capturing these moments.
• We’ll ask community members who are able to pay voluntary monthly subscriptions so that our reporters can keep roofs over their heads as we ensure our day-in, day-out coverage thrives. This ensures that, just as one example, the parents who are already struggling to make ends meet just so their kids can participate in sports will be able to enjoy our coverage just as much as the team parents who are able to pay a little bit each month, so Lawrence Sports can continue to exist for everyone. It also means no paywall, so there is no barrier to sharing the stories of these student-athletes with as many people as possible.
• We’ll explore creating multimedia coverage that extends our coverage further than the traditional written game content of the past. This means in addition to our added emphasis on producing stories with rich photos and video clips of the game action, we’ll engage with our audience to determine if they have a strong interest in purchasing various products such as posters, story printouts and seasonal magazines. These physical products would showcase these student-athletes with a print display of stories and photos highlighting their accomplishments.
• As we drive past our initial funding goals, the increased revenue will go directly into improving the scope of our coverage. That means more reporters, photographers and videographers covering more and more competitions across all sports at each of the high schools we cover.
• We ultimately plan to create an intern program where we work with high school journalism programs to pay young aspiring journalists for their work covering their schools and possibly beyond. This will give opportunities for high school students at each of our schools to learn about sports reporting, photography, video editing, graphic design and many other fields as they help produce stronger coverage for sports and activities at their school.
We started working on this website with the idea that we would be revitalizing high school sports coverage. But in reality, high school sports coverage never looked like this. It has never found a way to cover all sports in such a comprehensive fashion.
Our coverage will be the strongest, the smartest, the fastest in town and across the state.
Lawrence Sports aims to create the best possible coverage for high school athletics.
