Online Media Guides Earn Praise

PROVO -- BYU’s online media guides have been recognized by eyeonsportsmedia.com as the Best Online Media Guide Solution, receiving the 2009 Bloodshot Eyeball Award for Sports Media Best Practices.

In an effort to be at the forefront of the movement in collegiate athletics towards online media guides, the BYU Athletic Communications and Publications and Graphics departments combined to create seven online sport media guides for the 2009-10 season, including football, soccer, men’s cross country, swimming, women’s basketball, men’s volleyball and gymnastics. With an emphasis on ease of navigation and web-friendly design, the media guides provide comprehensive content in a true html format.

“The bottom line is that BYU is and should be the model of how ALL sports organizations, professional and amateur, should design and present their information,” said Christopher Byrne of eyeonsportsmedia.com. “They should not listen to what the vendors are trying to sell them. They should not listen to people saying that unless you push the technology envelope, people will not use the resource. They should talk to BYU and take a look at their online media guides.”

BYU’s online media guides have earned praise as being easy to find, easy to access and easy to repurpose. As opposed to using unwieldy PDF files or more flashy but impractical online magazine styles, BYU focused on using a format that provides a practical online media guide solution. As a result, the guides have proven to be attractive in their simplicity, completely user-friendly and cost-effective.

“We didn't want to create an online publication and put it into an old media box,” said Dave Broberg, head of the Athletic Publications and Graphics Department. “We wanted to really utilize the powers of the web when we started to make the transition from print to media. We worked hard to keep it simple and give it a common sense structure and navigation.”

To read Byrne's complete analysis of BYU's online media guides, CLICK HERE.