Why Media Guides Remain Important, Pt. 3

Want to see the waste – it’s not at the printer, it’s at the copier.

The head-long rush to drop the printed media guide has the same amount of logic in it as the 60-page football game notes.

Rather than providing a clear vision of what the message of a team would be, many SIDs prove their worth through weight. It’s the easiest thing in the SID world, just add another page from StatCrew, revise every starting player and key substitutes’ bios each week, carry forward notes for each game played.

Look, I find myself reflexively doing that as well, particularly for the TV games. There is some purpose to the full-blown package for broadcast, but that does not mean I need to update notes for all 30 regular season games in that fashion, and even for the live event games just run enough for the broadcasters. The bulk notes are in the shorter condensed format.

Moving to on-demand fact sheets would add up to more trees saved than on-demand press guides; likely a greater overall reduction in clutter and cost for the athletic department as a whole. How do I come to this conclusion? A year of watching football and men’s basketball games hit a crescendo at the NCAA Outdoor championships.

Let’s break down who was in the press box last week. Of the more than 120 seats, there were 17 traditional visiting working media and another 14 “.com” media – that’s 31 seats. The rest of the visitors? Some 51 seats taken by SIDs representing schools. Take a look at these two pictures. That’s the library of press notes on Saturday morning. Few schools were down by half in the number they brought. Many had not had their notes touched at all. Yes, there are media guides in those stacks, but getting rid of the guides will only lead to an explosion in notes.

By the way, that reinforces another key change – that we are the media for the vast majority of our teams. As a side note, how many of those SIDs were Twittering to bring real-time news back to their home markets? Hard to tell, but I only noticed Tweets for about a dozen that were specific from the event.