How is your school's relationship with the local media?


2kool

2kool

Well-Known Member
I'm curious about this. Some HBCUs get more local coverage from the paper & TV stations than others. What are they doing internally to get coverage outside of negative information or scandals?
 
Put them on blast when they choose to cover LSU for the entire segment and don't mention Southern. I put Jacques Doucet on blast a few years ago when they did this top 25 moments for 2011 in BR sports and had not one mention of Southern. They mentioned things such as LSU hiring a new women's basketball coach, a big win for all of their teams, local high schools teams making a big play to win, high school coaches being hired, everything but Southern. I tagged him to my post and said how could WAFB not find 1 thing to include Southern in the video. He messed up and responded saying Southern didn't have any moments that season, and I brought up several including Southern going on the road and upsetting No.14 Alabama State, Southern hiring Roman Banks as their new basketball coach, and Southern naming Sandy Pugh as the interim AD. ( I mean if LSU hiring a women's basketball coach is big enough to land on the list and some random high school getting a new coach was a big deal) After more than enough of us complained about it, they seem to try to give Southern more coverage. We understand that LSU runs the town, but outright neglecting covering the other in-town school is not right. The Advocate is a different animal. They seem to be scarce when things are going good, but anything negative and they're all over it.
 



Same in Houston as the tsu and su wbb fight was FRONT PAGE news in the chronicle when that's usually reserved for major issues in the world

Outside of that no really cares as Houston media chases the pro teams or what jj watt does on the toilet and the black media only covers swac if tsu and PV are playing each other so they can get into the game
 
number1 said:
Yeah they'll give full coverage for the bad stuff, might even put you on the front page of the paper. Anything good will be buried somewhere in another section. lol
Click to expand...

What's y'all PR/marketing staff relationship with editors, news directors and producers?
 
JSU's football team is covered pretty good. The local news stations (wlbt, wjtv, wapt, etc) show spring & fall practice segments. They also highlight every home & away game. Showing highlights of each game. Saturday night they announce the score. Then show the highlights on Sunday.
Sometime during the week they usually go on campus and interview the coaches/players about their win or loss from the weekend before and ask them what changes are they making for the upcoming game.

They do the same with the home basketball games. Highlights and scores. They don't show too much away highlights unless we travel to alcorn or swac tournament.

Baseball is usually highlighted when it's an in-state matchup (alcorn, belhaven, tougaloo, Mississippi state etc).
They've highlighted other games such as games against FAMU, Su, Grambling...

Were covered well enough.
Now when it comes to all the positive things on JSU campus concerning academics & community developement..... That's a different story. They rarely report that. They'll report something bad though. But that's just how the media is so I don't take it personal like some people on here. JSU is growing in a positive way. Academically & Enrollment wise so the media's lack of "positive" promotion is not holding us back.

Ole miss & MSU get most of the air time. but that's expected. Their alumns been running the news stations for decades now.
 
Last edited:
Greenwood Commonwealth (paper) - Blah. Ole Miss and MSU get better coverage and more love than the D1 school in the same county.

WXVT/WABG - They seem to have shifted to being a SEC homer station recently with Valley, DSU and the two CCs being second fiddle. For instance, the SEC signing classes were covered before Valley and DSU.
 
Kendrick said:
What's y'all PR/marketing staff relationship with editors, news directors and producers?
Click to expand...

Non-existent for the most part. I'm sure there are contacts in a rolodex but relationship? Yeah right. Part of that is because of prior negative coverage, and the lack of the willingness to "deal with" the local media. After the Huntsville Times consolidated with the Alabama Media Group and let go of the only beat writer who covered us with any impartial respectability, any resemblence of a local media relationship died. It also doesn't help that our sports information office is bordering on useless.

Our University marketing department primarily focuses on giving & advancement. They don't promote athletics, and our athletic department doesn't have a true marketing staff.
 
2kool said:
Our University marketing department primarily focuses on giving & advancement. They don't promote athletics, and our athletic department doesn't have a true marketing staff.
Click to expand...

Seems like similar stories I've heard regarding other HBCUs, where SI departments are quite short staffed and don't have the time, manpower or resources to commit to a lot of things.
 
Kendrick said:
Seems like similar stories I've heard regarding other HBCUs, where SI departments are quite short staffed and don't have the time, manpower or resources to commit to a lot of things.
Click to expand...

Most of them don't, but all you have to do is look at the websites of individual SWAC schools to see which athletic departments are getting the most from their short staffs, and the one's who don't.
 
the band fan said:
Same in Houston as the tsu and su wbb fight was FRONT PAGE news in the chronicle when that's usually reserved for major issues in the world

Outside of that no really cares as Houston media chases the pro teams or what jj watt does on the toilet and the black media only covers swac if tsu and PV are playing each other so they can get into the game[/QUOTE]

Not entirely true. Kenyatta Cavil comes on KCOH 1230 AM every Tuesday at 7 p.m. with HBCU sports talk. He talks all things HBCU.
Click to expand...
 
And this is why I posed the question. What are different schools doing internally? Do some athletic departments have a marketing and media relations unit or committee?

The SWAC is on the cusp of growth, but I still see a lot of "old school" ways of doing things (merely existing in our own bubbles, refusal to work with local media, etc).
 
We have a pretty good connection. Positive and negative is reported..... O.K. "Buddy" Davis and T.Scott Boatwright....
 



Moreso newspapers in Houston is what I'm referring to and black ones at that

You have some who will do only a few stories on hbcus and will do more stories on issues that don't pertain to them so that's why I glance and trash
 
Melvin Rodriguez got snubbed by that dude from MS state. We had to troll CL beat writers about Rodriguez batting average before they put him on the front news. Funny that Rodriguez got drafted a couple rounds before that MS state dude haha but im chilling
 
It's the editorial leadership....you have sec guys in these newspaper rooms and literally that's all they know and the black folks they hire ain't hbcu grads so they come in like a deer in the headlights

I see more wasted space in a newspaper now then the law allows when that could be devoted to at least tsu as they'll claim PV is too far when the chron is a stones throw from tsu
 
the band fan said:
It's the editorial leadership....you have sec guys in these newspaper rooms and literally that's all they know and the black folks they hire ain't hbcu grads so they come in like a deer in the headlights

I see more wasted space in a newspaper now then the law allows when that could be devoted to at least tsu as they'll claim PV is too far when the chron is a stones throw from tsu
Click to expand...

The Reader Representative at one time for the Chronicle in the early 2000's was a Texas Southern alum but he didn't have the muscle to make it right and we were giving them the ammo to do so.
 
I think the Houston Chronicle has room for much improvement when it comes to covering TSU; however, I like to compare peer institutions in the city and for TSU that would be HBU. Now that HBU is in the Southland Conference and fields a football team then we should be able to compare apples to apples. To compare NFL, MLB, NBA, and to a level of degree UH and Rice coverage to TSU is ingenious.

On the other hand, the Houston Chronicle has covered some TSU stories on the front sports page-story on Mike Davis and his decision to schedule that brutal non-conference schedule. The same day an article talking about the men's basketball program. There was decent coverage of the SWAC basketball tournament. If you go to Chron.com you'll find stories there as well. We had five Texas schools in the NCAA and TSU was included in those articles and the final scores of the 1st round listed TSU on the front page with the other four schools.

The local news as someone has mentioned covers TSU scores which I'm good with because I think we get a broader audience as many folks do not read but watch TV. I would like to see us being mentioned leading up to games opposed to just after the game. For example, maybe on Wednesday have a clip showing TSU football preparing to take on Southern, PV, etc. at BBVA this Saturday at 7pm as this could get the casual fan to come to our games.

In addition, there should have been a write-up in the Houston Chronicle about our basketball team playing in China, the championships that we have won, and the release of our football schedule, season tickets on sale, and the promotions. This is the direction that we should be headed and honestly, we'll get there sooner should we move up to FBS level. However, the success of our sports team will take care of some of this I feel and we'll continue to see improvement.

As I continue to speak "truth", our alumni will have to step up and attend our football games. When the local "media" see 5K fans at a football game, the message is that we don't care enough to go to the game so why should they waste their time covering something that's not newsworthy.
 
Hurd, I subscribe to the chron and have read it since my dad switched over from the post and what SWAC gets compared to the 90s and before is ridiculous

You go in the archives and there were numerous tsu and PV stories up and down the paper, as the 2000s approached it got smaller and smaller to nothing today.....you have stringers covering us so they know nothing about the day to day operations of the school...its atrocious

It's so easy now to get info that these papers should jam packed with coverage but they don't care and the black outlets refuse to fill the void as all they want is ad money
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top