Wendy Parker

More strides are being made on new media, women's fronts

By WENDY PARKER / New Media Liaison
Freelance
wendygparker@gmail.com

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It has been a busy first year working on new media initiatives with the USBWA, and we've made some good progress working with the NCAA on credentialing issues and reaching out to college basketball bloggers.

The NCAA's revised credential policies have enabled blogs like Rush The Court and Basketball Prospectus to get credentials for the NCAA tournament. On the women's side, a number of online ventures, especially Hoopfeed.com, are quickly becoming go-to sources for news with the dearth of newspaper coverage.

Our dialogue with the NCAA will continue as it reviews its procedures, and I've heard from a number of bloggers from around the country who want to let us know who they are. Getting worthy blogs and sites on our radar is still a vitally important component of identifying new sources of information about college basketball outside of the traditional outlets. If you know of any of these sites, or if you are running one yourself, please let me know.

Reminders: • Enter the annual Best Writing Contest • USBWA member/award programs

If there are issues you'd like for me to bring up with the NCAA that are media-related, let me know.

In my conversations with these bloggers, I've explained the NCAA criteria and given them suggestions on working their local sports information directors. Developing good relationships in this way will go a long way toward getting credentials and establishing these new ventures as important components of the college basketball media scene.

Something else I'd like to tackle in the next year is to use our Facebook accounts to provide resource information to USBWA members about the sports media industry. If you've seen the CoSIDA website (www.cosida.com) and its Twitter feed (@CoSIDANews), they both contain good professional development material pertaining to digital technology, issues in sports media and sports business. Their profession has been in as much upheaval as the news business, and from time to time I'll be posting items such as this on our social media outlets. I promise not to deluge you.

Many of our members regularly blog, use Facebook and Twitter and are literate with the digital world, but the learning curve never ends. If there's something I can help you find or help you do, please contact me. If there's something you're doing with digital tools that you think might help your fellow members, pass that along. I'm always learning new skills and concepts that are useful in the work that I do and want to reach out and share ideas.

At the Women's Final Four in Indianapolis, we were glad to once again have ESPN as the sponsor of our awards breakfast. Thanks go out to Rachel Margolis, Mike Soltys and Josh Krulewitz for their continued support. Carol Stiff, ESPN's vice president and top executive in charge of its coverage of the women's tournament, was on hand and is this year's recipient of the Mel Greenberg Media Award given by the Women's Basketball Coaches Association and named after our own USBWA Hall of Famer. NCAA women's basketball committee chairwoman Marilyn McNeil also offered remarks on the state of the women's tournament.

We were delighted to meet the USBWA's women's Most Courageous Award winner, Memphis guard Bilqis Abdul-Qaadir. Her parents, Alooah and Tariq, and the entire Memphis coaching staff joined us at the Westin Hotel. Many thanks to head coach Melissa McFerrin for introducing us to her very special point player.

I look forward to working with Joe Mitch, new president Lenox Rawlings and the rest of the USBWA board, and with all of you in the coming year. Please contact me at wendygparker@gmail.com or follow me on Twitter @wparker. The USBWA Twitter handle is @usbwa.