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For the second consecutive year, The Daily Collegian is the winner of the annual Off the Block Best Men’s Volleyball Online Coverage of the Year award.
The Best Men’s Volleyball Coverage of the Year award recognizes the nation’s top college student-newspaper in college men’s volleyball coverage. The award winners and three finalists are determined based on Off the Block’s season-long analysis of the online coverage for NCAA men’s volleyball on college newspaper websites.
Newspapers were judged based on their online articles about men’s volleyball throughout the season, both in terms of quality and quantity. Also factored into this award was a newspaper’s use of online media platforms such as photo galleries, audio slideshows, videos, blogs and social media for men’s volleyball coverage.
The Daily Collegian is the on-campus student-newspaper at Penn State University. Men’s volleyball beat reports Garrett Ross and Lindsey Smith led the newsppaer in its coverage of the nationally-ranked Nittany Lions.
The two reporters combined to write almost 100 online articles about Penn State this season, including several compelling personality profiles and news-features. Among the top articles from the season included Smith’s personalty profile about middle attacker Matt Callaway overcoming off-the-court adversity to earn a spot in the starting lineup and Ross’ news-feature about coach Mark Pavlik’s new recruiting philosophy.
Beyond the articles, The Daily Collegian was a leader in social media coverage providing outstanding in-match updates via Twitter and tweets throughout the week to enhance the newspaper’s brand and coverage of men’s volleyball. The newspaper also provide online videos of Penn State’s postmatch news conference following select home matches this season.
The Ball State Daily News (Ball State University), Daily Bruin (UCLA) and The Universe (BYU) were selected as finalists for the Off the Block Best Men’s Volleyball Online Coverage of the Year.
This is the fourth year of the Off the Block Best Men’s Volleyball Online Coverage of the Year award. The Daily Collegian won the inaugural award in 2011 before repeating in 2013 and 2014.
The Ball State Daily News won the award in 2012 and has been a finalist in the three other years. In addition, this is the third straight year The Universe was named a finalist, while the Daily Bruin earned finalists honors for the second time in the award’s history.
Off the Block is a national award winning website that launched in January 2011 and is among the nation’s leaders in college men’s volleyball coverage. Off the Block each season presents a variety of media awards recognizing outstanding performances in college sports journalism.