Clark Teuscher, SID at DIII North Central College (Naperville, IL) and a member of the CoSIDA New Media/Technology Committee, writes about transitioning from printed to digital media guides for the 2009-10 academic year.
See North Central College's athletic website and DMG's at
http://northcentralcardinals.com .
The value of the printed media guide is an issue that has crossed most of our desks on a routine basis the past several years as technological options have broadened. The discussion has taken on more weight lately, as institutions looking to tighten their belts in response to the economic climate have made the decision simple by cutting the money from their budgets.
While we haven’t resorted to such extreme measures, North Central College has had the issue of a potential transition to an online-only guide on the table for a few years, and last spring, after discussions with several entities on campus and with the Sports Information Department’s whole-hearted endorsement, we decided the time was right to make the switch.
This wasn’t a move to be viewed as a magic bullet to cure the college’s financial ills (it didn’t; we intended to make better use of the money, not eliminate it) or take mass quantities of work off the plates of the SIDs (we all know that’s not an option).
However, it did make enough of a difference to allow us to expand our publication efforts to all of our programs instead of just the eight that we had enough money to print guides for, pursue alternative ideas for print projects, and take better advantage of our online options.
The first step toward making such a move was to consider our alternatives. Having obtained Internet Consulting Services as a website vendor and launched
northcentralcardinals.com last March, we looked at ICS’s new Digital Media Guide product as a venue for the online guides. We also considered options such as simply putting the PDFs online or other free options that are certainly available, but for the price and the options offered, we decided the Digital Media Guide was our best option and convened a meeting of athletics, marketing, and admissions personnel on campus to present the DMG as our recommended choice.
While we may have been able to get the institution to move forward with the DMG without that large a cross-section of people involved in the process, it became necessary when it was time to take the next step and sell the coaching staffs who had been receiving printed guides on the idea.
As expected, we encountered some resistance from this group, never one to suffer change easily. The reassurance of the athletics administration and admissions office that each staff would still have sufficient resources to recruit effectively, helped get the coaching staffs on board.
Also part of the pitch to the coaches was the materials that would be available to supplement an online guide. In addition to web-based content that can be continuously updated, we also indicated that the savings would be substantial enough to provide for smaller printed pieces tailored to each program and expand on game-day printing efforts. The marketing office came through with brochures containing the vital information (as well as the appropriate URLs) and we added quite a bit of depth to our game-day programs at almost no additional cost.Hinging on all of this, however, was the fact that the sports information department was now tasked with producing 10 additional media guides. To many, this may sound like enough reason to abandon the idea entirely, but the hill wasn’t as steep as it sounds. Most of the necessary information was already on our website in one form or another, and just had to be converted to fit into the templates we had set up for the existing guides.
This was where our student staff figured in significantly, as well. It’s pretty easy to train most college students on computer software these days, and after a short monitoring period, we were able to turn them loose on the bulk of the data entry. They really took ownership of these projects once they were able to run with them, and contributed some great ideas to our design choices as well.
We rolled out the first of the online guides in September. Initially, some coaches planned on using money from their own budgets to print their guides, but after a period of some adjustment, they’ve seen the value in the move to a web-based publication. It doesn’t cost anything to e-mail a URL to an online guide to recruits, parents or boosters, and the admissions and alumni offices have also jumped on board to get the word out.
Naturally, the route we took was not a “one-size-fits-all” solution. Yet the principles we followed to get to the end of the road - determining alternatives, enlisting the proper support and considering supplementary materials- certainly can be applied to whatever your situation might be.
You may encounter some resistance. You may determine that your printed guides still meet your needs. But with some evaluation and innovative thought, your office can become a leader in your institution’s quest to enhance its online presence while preserving its bottom line.
Clark Teuscher is the sports information director at North Central College, an NCAA Division III institution in Naperville, Illinois, and has been a CoSIDA member since 2002. North Central’s digital media guides can be found at northcentralcardinals.com.