An update on OC Sports Zone; please support independent, community journalism

Beckman’s baseball team held the Beckman World Series, run by players.

A couple weeks go, we launched OC Sports Zone, our new free sports website for Orange County.

We believe a good story is a good story regardless of what city it comes from.

In just a couple weeks, we’ve been fortunate to cover some great stories, ranging from a special needs basketball camp for Beckman students to the opening of a new weight training facility at Crean Lutheran.

To see the slide show, please click on the first photo.

We also followed Matt McLain’s decision to turn down a $2.6 million offer from the Arizona Diamondbacks and we covered a local Little League team which was playing in a tournament without its manager. In addition, we’ve been out covering a couple football passing league tournaments.

This past week, we launched a series of players to watch and it’s clear that there is tremendous interest in the new varsity program at Portola.

RELATED STORY: Welcome to the Zone

And our readers have responded with solid, consistent page views. It is a great starting point for us, but only the beginning.

We realize many of you are just returning from vacations and getting ready for the start of the fall athletic seasons soon.

You may not be aware of OC Sports Zone, so here is a rundown of what we are all about:

HOW WE OPERATE: We are an independent sports website, owned by long-time Orange County sportswriter Tim Burt, who is also the editor and main writer. We are not affiliated with any local newspaper or media company and we do not charge readers to view our site. We rely on local advertising to support us. We are grateful to our initial advertisers who had the faith is us from the start and put us over the top for the first month. We encourage other businesses to support community journalism.

We need the resources so that we can provide long-range, sustained coverage. Those resources will be used to cover the operating expenses for the website and to pay for freelance journalists and photographers to cover stories in the coming months.

We currently have 90 day introductory discounts on advertising and our ad director Gabriel Calderon will work with you to meet your business needs. You can contact Tim: timburt@ocsportszone.com or Gabriel: gabriel@ocsportszone.com for more information. Gabriel is also well versed in social media and can connect your business on our social media platforms as well.

HOW WE GET STORIES: We have a small staff so we rely largely on the community to provide us story tips, story information and photos. We welcome submissions, including photos. All stories (recommended length five paragraphs) should include first and last names. Photos should include first and last names and athletes should be identified from left to right. We will also put together articles if the basic information is provided. There is no charge to have a story published and the content can be edited to meet our standards.

BEST READ: Here are some of the most highly-read stories in the first two weeks. We constantly monitor what our readers are looking at.

We appreciate your initial response and support and ask that you recommend to your friends to join us in the OC Sports Zone! We have lots of exciting content planned for the month of August, including football previews and game coverage for the middle of the month. We hope you will follow us on Twitter and Facebook: @ocsportszone

Tim Burt, owner and editor; email: timburt@ocsportszone.com

Gabriel Calderon, sales and social media director: gabriel@ocsportszone.com