By Lorenzo Perez
The News & Observer
Published: 9/6/2006
Excerpt:
Duke, N.C. State, North Carolina and other colleges long have used
their sports Web sites to sell tickets, T-shirts and other souvenirs.
But now they also sell something else -- themselves.Evolving
beyond the posting of news releases, team schedules and box scores,
major college athletics programs have expanded the brand-name goods
offered online to include a growing menu of news content. Much of it is
free, while video highlights and other specialized features are offered
as "premium" content for subscribers. ...
... The
school sites sometimes mirror the online content provided by
newspapers, ESPN and other entities with no official ties to the
programs they cover. Not surprisingly, however, the school sites' mix
of fan polls, feature stories on student-athletes and reports on
stadium renovations, new uniform designs and other items tend to cast
the schools' athletic programs in a positive light. ...
... That approach makes these sites operate more like
official publicity outlets than as objective news sources, according to
a faculty member at a journalism training and research center.
"What
they're doing is a better job of distributing information, but they're
not doing journalism," said Howard Finberg, director of Interactive
Learning at The Poynter Institute in St. Petersburg, Fla.
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