Detroit Free Press

COVERAGE of the NCAA CHAMPIONSHIP GAME

This page provides a summary of research results for the Detroit Free Press’s photographic coverage of the final game of the 2013 NCAA March Madness tournament.

DETROIT FREE PRESS’S PHOTOS of the NCAA Championship*

DownloadedFileResearchers found that the Detroit Free Press, the hometown newspaper serving the University of Michigan community, unsurprisingly emphasized game play in its photographic and video coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championships.  As Michigan lost the final matchup, Detroit’s coverage did not emphasize the post-game celebrations of Louisville.

Overall, researchers pinned* 118 photos from freep.com the night of and day after the NCAA Championship.  These pins emphasized photos of the game, taken through the lens of the University of Michigan. Photo coverage waned toward the end of the game, and the Detroit outlet published few post-game photos.

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Detroit Free Press provided extensive fan coverage during the NCAA Championship game.

  • Researchers* found that the majority of the images were taken during the actual game. Any post game images taken were focused on Michigan — in fact, over all there was very minimal coverage of Louisville.
  • The Detroit Free Press published extensive coverage of the Michigan fans — pushing towards the same amount of coverage of gameplay and of fans watching the game.
  • Michigan’s Trey Burke was the most mentioned person throughout Detroit’s coverage.
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Very few images used by Detroit Free Press showed just Louisville. They were either of just Michigan or both Michigan and Louisville.

(Click here to see Detroit Free Press’ photos that researchers pinned to Pinterest.)

These images from the Detroit Free Press are a sampling of its photo coverage of the NCAA Men’s Basketball Championship. Clicking a photo links to the Pinterest board of that photo.

Focus of the Detroit Free Press’s Photo Coverage of the NCAA Championship 

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The Detroit Free Press coverage emphasize the actual game play and the teams’ fans.

  • By far the greatest amount of coverage of the game by the Detroit Free Press focused on the actual game play on the court and the Michigan fans in the stands. 
  • Researchers found that post game coverage focused on Michigan rather than the winning team, Louisville, by over two to one.
  • There was more side line coverage than there were Louisville postgame photos.

PINTEREST: Although most stories that came up within the search on the Detroit Free Press website included thumbnail images in the teaser, these small images could not be pinned using Pinterest. This takes away somewhat from the researchers’ representation of the full online visual experience. However, Pinterest did allow for videos from freep.com to be pinned, so this media was accounted for from this website.

CONTEXT: The Detroit Free Press, founded in 1831, is a Gannett publication. It is the largest newspaper in the Detroit area, and Gannett’s largest city paper. The Detroit Free Press serves Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston, Washtenaw and Monroe counties of Michigan primarily.  Ann Arbor is located in Washtenaw County.

* NB: Researchers applied the same collection methodology for all the news outlets studied. It is likely that the researchers on this survey did not collect every photograph published, and, on occasion, certain photographs that could be viewed were not collectible by Pinterest. The total number of photographs studied, therefore, should be understood to be representative of those published on the news outlets, not an absolute set of all photographs published on all sites.
It is fair to note, however, that the number of photographs of either game collected for any given site is a rough indication of the commitment of that site to photographically covering that specific game.
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