Web site staff busy with tournament

Mike Mitchell has gotten little rest over the past two days. On Tuesday and Wednesday, Mitchell was at the Show Me Center from 8 a.m. to 11:30 p.m., working out of his in-venue office, posting content to semoball.com. Every game gets its coverage on the site, with scores, stats and video highlights.

At Mitchell's disposal are three video cameras and three staff members, helping shoot video, pictures and gather information for the site -- right now for the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament. No longer do local sports fans have to wait until the next day for all their scores and highlights to come out in the newspaper.

"We can have a game account and video posted in a couple of hours," said Mitchell, a Southeast Missourian employee who coordinates sports coverage for semoball.com. "This gives us the capability for video highlights, a game story and pictures throughout the day."

The site was unveiled in September by the Southeast Missourian as a new way to cover local sports -- one that incorporates coverage from newspapers in Cape Girardeau, Sikeston, Poplar Bluff, Dexter and Kennett. Writers from papers around the region post blogs on the site, accompanied by video and pictures from semoball.com staff. Site users can also post their pictures and video and post on the site's many blogs.

Southeast Missourian sports editor Toby Carrig said the site provides the newspaper with another way to give readers information about local sports, including the Christmas tournaments, with updates quicker than what print provides. The interactive nature of the site is another key aspect, since local fans can interact online, he said.

As time goes on, Carrig said, he hopes to see semoball.com expand, providing real-time updates from games around the area and embarking on more video storytelling projects.

For now the focus is the Christmas Tournament. On Tuesday the site had 1,479 users and 9,252 page views. Average daily use for the month before Tuesday was 834 users and 3,304 page views.