It’s happening all over the country. Big markets like Philadelphia, New York and Detroit. Smaller markets like Nashville and Louisville. And it’s directly impacting every SID in how they do their jobs every day.
Newspapers, radio stations and television stations are laying off reporters and staff all over the country including a large percentage who covered college sports. The Camden (NJ) Courier Post laid off 18 full-time sports staffers in early December. The Nashville Tennessean laid off 25 reporters the same day. Even Sports Illustrated laid off 40 people this month. With reductions in staffing and the size of the news hole devoted to college sports, it’s harder than ever before to get the results for your teams into print and on the air.
And that is where the
Virtual Pressbox™ from
College Fanz™ comes in. When we launched the
Virtual Pressbox at the 2008 CoSIDA Convention in Tampa, it became clear that this was a valuable resource for promoting the schedules, results and achievements of college teams around the country. By utilizing the
Virtual Pressbox,
CoSIDA members have reported great success for their fans, the student-athletes and their families, and their alumni in seeing wider exposure for their stories, while the college athletic web site benefits from increased traffic and more timely content.
With the recent acquisition of the
Victory Sports Network, the dominant voice of the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics (NAIA), we’ve added even more fanz, alumni, friends and family from the nearly 300 schools in the NAIA to the
College Fanz Sports Network. CoSIDA members at
Park University,
Union College and
Malone University (to name a few) benefit equally with their colleagues in the NCAA such as
Syracuse University,
St. Cloud State,
DePauw,
Neumann College,
Holy Family,
Georgia College and
Salem International.
The
Virtual Pressbox was designed to simplify the SID’s workload. It takes minutes, not hours, to publish schedules, scores and game stories. Some CoSIDA members have told us how they access their
Virtual Pressbox when they have a few moments of downtime – on the bus, in the airport, at practice – wherever they can get online with a wireless connection. They update their scores and game stories in real time.
Within seconds, they have broadcast their stories, schedules, and scores around the world online and bypassed the shrinking traditional media who no longer have the time or staffing to take their phone call or open their e-mail, let alone come out and cover the game live.
Recently, we added an
America’s College Scoreboard™ widget, which enables SID’s to publish schedules and scores directly on a school’s athletic web site. Student-athletes, parents, alumni, friends and family can subscribe to that free feed and add that school’s widget to their personal web sites and social networks.
All of us at
College Fanz realize your time and budget are equally in short-supply. That’s why
College Fanz offers the
Virtual Pressbox to our corporate partners at CoSIDA for free. We also have an
internship program to attract new student help to your office.
In the coming days, we’re launching our newest resource – the
CoSIDA Community. Developed in partnership with CoSIDA by
College Fanz, this is CoSIDA's new online, password-protected forum in which all members can continue the dialogue from the CoSIDA Convention, coordinate online meetings of their committees, participate in polling and chat with committees, exchange protected messaging with CoSIDA members, and keep current with trends and activities throughout CoSIDA.
As always, all our efforts at
College Fanz are part of our ongoing commitment to CoSIDA, and our goal of simplifying an SID’s workload while enhancing each school’s online exposure and opportunities. We invite your
feedback directly through our web site or you can call 888-845-6316 and ask for Jim DeLorenzo.
And be sure to check out our other articles recently published on the CoSIDA web site: