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Positivity within Athletic Department Journalism

Deacsfan27

Deacsfan27

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Positivity within Official Website Journalism

This is not just a question about Wake Forest, but just a question in general about all colleges and universities. Obviously the official websites of schools are biased towards their own teams and want to say things that are kind about them. I just wonder if journalism in that regard has been taken too far...example:

Here is the write-up by the George Washington official website after a game with UVA recently in baseball....what sticks out about this game? (If you have seen this already then don't post about it)

Y'all will figure that out soon enough. My primary question is this: How much positivity is too much positivity? It seems like the official websites, and scouts that are employed/close to the school put out too much of an optimistic front and the fans that don't know any better get let down.

I just want to hear discussion on this and see where it goes on the thread, because I just get tired of reading "official reports" from schools that don't tell the story of the game, rather focusing on what paints the athletes of the school in the best light. This is not an attack on Wake Forest at all...I just saw that link above and it made me laugh because of how poor the writing was.
 
I think people realize what kind of propaganda they're getting from the official site and it's no big deal. I think folks also understand they're not getting great writing and don't need it or expect it. It's a game write up. You could do it with mad libs.
 
I have no problem with Athletic Departments official sites being pure sunshine brigade. If a person believes what they get from an official site is balanced then they are stupid.
 
Ok I agree about official websites...what about scouts that work for a certain university, or beat writers. A lot of people think that the smoke blown up skirts by certain beat writers (and I'm not talking about DC) is actually a legitimate take on the action at hand.
 
LOL I didn't even understand why this was an issue until I got to the second to last paragraph...cracked me up. I don't see why it's not at least in the first paragraph or two.
 
Write-ups from AD sites are really only good for getting official boxscores and quotes from players and coaches.

As for that article, it just paints a picture that GW is clearly improving as they went into the final inning with a chance to win against the best team in the country. It gives hope to the fan base, especially those with money who will donate. Propaganda comes in many forms.
 
The dude pitched a perfect game...that should be the lede for any article regardless of what you are writing for. There is plenty of room to get the propaganda in there.
 
Not really. For that medium, if your team is no-hit, you want to minimize it as much as possible. It's not the story they want to tell. They want to tell the story of a great pitching effort by their pitching staff against the best team in the country. They can say "sure we got a perfect game pitched on us, but we only allowed 6 hits and 2 runs against the best team in the league". That's fine for that source of information and it's effective in rallying the sunshiners in the fanbase.

Think of how many Wake fans think the real story of the VT game last year was Josh Harris' rushing performance. Instead of thinking about how he picked up a third of his total rushing yards in one game or how we still lost by 31 points despite getting 241 yards from one back, people are pinning their hopes on that performance.

Harris Rushes for 241 Yards But Deacs Fall to Hokies 52-21
 
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Doofus, you should read manutd.com's official match reports sometimes. I like to read them then guess which writer did them. Two of them blow smoke up the readers' ass no matter what.
 
PhDeac said:
Not really. For that medium, if your team is no-hit, you want to minimize it as much as possible. It's not the story they want to tell. They want to tell the story of a great pitching effort by their pitching staff against the best team in the country. That's fine for that source of information and it's effective in rallying the sunshiners in the fanbase. They can say "sure we got a perfect game pitched on us, but we only allowed 6 hits and 2 runs against the best team in the league".
Click to expand...

I just find it hilarious...it's like the 8th PG ever in College Baseball and they barely mentioned it. To me that is offensive as a reader.
 
Of course it should, but a part of painting that rosie picture is brushing over any real analysis of the game. Make it seem like GW had a chance, even though the UVA pitcher was untouchable by the GW hitters.
 
Also, the article puts the emphasis on the GW pitching, giving them credit where it is due.
 
Deacsfan27 said:
I just find it hilarious...it's like the 8th PG ever in College Baseball and they barely mentioned it. To me that is offensive as a reader.
Click to expand...

But I doubt it would be offensive to you as a fan, particularly a delusional fan. Again, I bring up Josh Harris vs. VT as an example.
 
The problem is you're looking at the stories from the athletic departments as journalism, when they're not, they're public relations. Athletics departments have public relations section, not journalism sections. If you want to read journalism go to newspaper sites, not PR sites.
 
Now that was pretty bad from the George Washington people. Sounds like the RW attendance figures
 
AD Journalism (if you can call it that) has always been 90% cheerleading. I have a friend who plays lacrosse on a not so good D1 team and whenever I read the game articles on the school's official website the headline will be something like "Hawks outscore Leopards in Second Half" glossing over the fact they were down ten after the first. Its just the nature of things.
 
Cheerleading - that's why they're called media relations or sports information departments, not AD journalism departments.
 
Having worked not only in the WF sports info dept., but also at another ACC school, I can tell you that I personally always tried to be as impartial as possible without being negative toward the "home" team. The GW article is a bit over the top, a mid-week game where they saw none of UVa's top pitchers shouldn't be glossed over, but in the end, they lost. It's better to just state the facts, on the official website, provide a good story, tell the "home" team's side of what happened, with box score and full quotes and move on. Just get the info updated quickly and fairly, I found too much rah rah stuff to be the wrong way of doing things.
 
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