- April 29th, 2006, 12:19 am
#13805
First, the new site is not going to have game tracker. Game tracker costs money and the new site when it is unveiled is not going to have it. Game tracker and video web casts are planned, but that is in the future. Liberty is so far behind in other areas in the athletic department and this is not a priority right now.
Second, I keep hearing about timely coverage of Liberty sports on this board. Do you know it is being discussed to not post game stories the same night on the site, but the next day? Ask givemethemic, UVA does not post most of their stories the same day, they post the next day. Kevin Keys who is over marketing and media relations worked 20 years at West Virginia and they do not post game stories on the web until the next day. If you are looking to get out scores and game stories, the new rule of thumb in media relations is to post the next day. TV, radio and newspapers are used for immediate release. Many schools in the Big South, Colonial and A-10, do not even update and report scores for their olympic sports (tennis, golf, softball, track, volleyball, etc.) on a weekly basis. The web site is not ESPN or CNN or for that matter North Carolina where they have a whole team of people who just write and post stories to the web. It falls on media relations who currently have two people.
Right now, the Liberty athletic media relations is considered the top one in the Big South (Ask Chris Lang) and is better than most offices its size (three persons), while having more sports to take care of (comparable schools - VCU, Old Dominon, George Mason, Appalachian State, Towson, Dayton, etc.). Most events are posted before 11 p.m. on the same night. Most of the time it does not happen because they do not have the facilities at the site they are visiting or had to leave with a team immediately and are on a bus and cannot get wireless internet to post.
Problems or glitches are going to Kris because she was appointed by Jeff Barber to handle this. Both members of the media relations department are out of the office at various times during the week, so instead of no one getting the glitches or them waiting for several days, someone is able to compile them. To even suggest someone is passing the buck, just shows how misinformed you are. Do you realize that both guys in there right now are working over 55 hours including weekends and neither gets paid over $27,000? It is interesting that people write comments about things they know nothing about.
Finally, it nice to see you make fun of the name change from sports information to media relations, but that was not the idea of anyone in the department. That was a Thom Park change and it remains. It is what most athletic department's are calling their public relations wings. Indiana, the first to do it, has had the name for over 30 years.