Poynter on the Record

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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