On Saturday 19 March 2016, from 2:41am to 7:38am, I ran a motorsport live blog focusing on third practice and qualifying for the Australian Grand Prix – the first round of the 2016 F1 season. I also looked at and brought in news and updates on other motorsport championships taking place over the weekend.
Prior to the live blog, I prepared content to post throughout the live blog, as well as organising a schedule, sourcing pictures and working out some of the settings of Live Blog Pro – such as creating a name for the live blog, hyperlinking and structuring round-up posts.
The live blog kicked off with a 20-minute build-up prior to third practice and concluded with 35-minute wrap-up of the feed. I opted to do this after a lack of both in my practice live blog, which I completed the weekend before. I tried to bring in more use of symbols, adding in tweets and pictures, as well as adding pre-planned content and bullet point posts to add more information in short, and sharp bites.
Despite a main focus on F1, as it was the headline event over the weekend and took place at an odd time, far earlier than other series, I still decided to add in information and mentions of other series to give the blog more depth for motorsport fans and give them additional posts and updates during the lull, especially the gap between FP3 and qualifying.
This was a key moment for the live blog, I posted tweets and pre-planned content with information and guides to the new qualifying session. The change in format for the 2016 season was a good talking point in the feed and it failed massively, the system did not go down well with supporters, teams and drivers.
The live blog can be found from this link.
I live blogged the Australian Grand Prix race on Sunday, but it was part of my freelance work for Grand Prix Times. A two-man team of myself and a colleague ran the race live feed from 4:45am to 7:43am using a customised version of Live Blog Pro, which brought with it more symbols, posts directly being shared on Twitter and other additional features.
We split up the duties, so I was reporting on the drivers in positions sixth downwards, as well as embedding tweets and posting team radio broadcasts. It was a challenge as the race was packed full of drama but we stepped up the professionalism with two people on the feed.
Because of my work on Sunday, I was not able to live blog the race for my assessment, which is why I opted for Saturday’s third practice and qualifying. But this did give me the opportunity to complete a longer live blog on Saturday and also helped me bring the ideas I have learned in this module through to my work.
The Australian Grand Prix race live blog on Grand Prix Times can be found here.
Jack Leslie 