Aug

28

Colleges continue to drop print media guides

Filed Under Social Media, Sports Business News 

The Washington Times took a look at how college athletic programs continue to turn from the traditional media guide in favor of a more multimedia-friendly guide on their website.

Off in a side hallway at the ACC’s Football Kickoff last month sat one of the long-standing fixtures at preseason media events. Stacks of freshly printed media guides – 208 pages of high-stock paper each – were available, a tangible resource for all but one team in the conference.

That school was Maryland, with a stack of notes replacing a shiny book. The school discontinued printing media guides this year, a decision that saves the department $150,000, said Brian Ullmann, Maryland’s senior associate athletic director for external operations.

“We had been wanting to put some more resources into our multimedia stuff online for a while and had a tough time harnessing those resources in terms of finances and personnel,” Ullmann said. “Clearly, the way things are going, in a couple years nobody is going to do a media guide. If they do, they’ll be minor.”

It’s no surprise that Maryland has joined universities like Michigan, Ohio State, and Wisconsin. Once a big college athletic department made the announcement that they were halting their production of print media guides, I expected others (but not all) to quickly follow suit.

There is a challenge trying to appease older fans and media members while trying to help the bottom line. It’s certainly nice to allow reporters and fans to view their guide online with player statistics updated after each game. However, it’s just not the same and doesn’t allow reporters to refer to a hard copy right in front of them without having to print out a page. It will certainly be interesting to see what media guides look like (if they even exist in print) in five years.

In Other College Athletic News:

  • The Buffalo News discusses how athletic departments can use Twitter to manage their message.
  • According to Editor & Publisher, the AP and Gannett have refused to sign SEC’s new credential policy. Dr. BS blogs about how it puts these two sides on a collision course.

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