Dangerously Good: “Despite Danger, Austrian Course Is a Magnet for Top Skiers”
By Hayes Rule
The majority of sports articles in domestic publications revolve around major leagues of interest, such as football, basketball and baseball. But it was an article about downhill skiing that piqued my interest.
I found an article in the New York Times titled, “Despite Danger, Austrian Course Is a Magnet for Top Skiers.” Written by Brian Pinelli, the article revolves around the Hahnenkamm downhill, a skiing competition in Kitzbuhel, Austria. The competition — and the course, specifically — is notoriously dangerous.
The article informs readers of some of the injuries last year and the outlook for this year’s competition. It took me a long time to find an enterprise story that piqued my interest; I found this one by simply perusing the New York Times’s website.
I chose this particular article because of its uniqueness. It’s not your typical sports story. One of the features that made it stick out from others was its usage of a video embedded into the story.
Rather than simply telling us about how dangerous the course is, it added a video showing the crashes from last year’s competition. I found that to be a very effective way of presenting the story.
Outside of the video, the journalistic piece gave us perspectives from several different people while giving us info on last year’s competition and the changes for this year’s. Overall, it covers all of the elements needed for an informative story while also including multimedia to take it a step further.
