Interview with Kathleen Lopez,
Webmaster of the Notre Dame Athletics Site
1. What is your degree in and where is it from?
My degree is in American Studies from Notre Dame.
2. What is your job title?
Managing Editor
3. What do you do in your job? What are your daily responsibilities? How big is your
staff?
My job duties vary from day-to-day. Basically, I am in charge of
maintaining, updating and developing the athletic website for the
University. I do everything from designing pages, to writing, to updating
stats, to taking photos, to booking audio and various other tasks. Well, it
is hard to pinpoint exactly how many people work on the website. I do the
majority of the work. Everyone that works in Sports Information has access
to the customized software so they can post stories as well. Then there are
three other editors, located in California, that do a minor amount of work.
Then we
have people that also have five or six others that provide the live audio
for the website.
4. How have you noticed any change in regards to the internet and Notre
Dame's
athletics? Has there been any increase in browsing of the site or of the
site's
attractions?
I started working solely on the athletic website about three years ago. In
those three years, a lot of stuff has changed. The website was initially
viewed as something extra that the athletic department did for their fans.
It wasn't really viewed as a tool for the department. Over the course of
three years, the focus has shifted. The University and the athletic
department views the website as one of its main ways to communicate with the
public. Updating the website is now on the top of the list of things to do.
In the past, faxing out results was the most important thing. Now, posting
scores and stories on the web, is the most important thing for the Sports
Information Dept. to do.
The website traffic fluctuates over any given time. Overall, traffic has increased tremendously. People can now visit UND.com for all their sport needs. If you follow football, you can listen to the broadcast, watch livestats, read the game recap, listen to postgame interviews and see photos of the game.
5.What improvements do you forsee in the future of und.com?
UND.com will most likely follow the trends of other websites. This past
year, the site started streaming live video of athletic contests. This most
likely will be the wave of the future. With a majority of consumers,
switching to high-speed internet access, they are demanding more video and
audio content from websites. UND.com is trying to fulfill that need.
Also websites are trying to use more photos. Currently, the site only uses smaller photos. In the future, the site is looking to shift to larger photos, giving the viewer a more newspaper type look.
6. Who do you think your main audience is on und.com?
Fans are our main audience. In terms of actual demographics, it is hard to
measure this without taking an online-survey. Visitors to the site, do not
enjoy filling those outs. Based upon our demographics from people that
purchase stuff in the FANStore and that sign-up for the newsletter, the
majority of the visitors to the site are males, ranging in age from 20-45.
7. Do you receive any feedback from your audience regards to what they want
to
see on und.com? Can you give us a sampling?
We do not get so much feedback about the website as we do about the faults
of the coaches. Since people do not have a specific name or phone number to
complain about any coach, they opt to send it to the website. When football
isn't doing so well, we are overwhelmed with emails calling for the
resignation of the coach. From time-to-time, we get some feedback about the
site. If people have a hard time tracking down some specific information,
they will send us an email. Occasionally, people will let us know if they
come across an error on a page. With over 1500 live pages on UND.com, it is
hard to police it all for grammatical or spelling errors.
8. In regards to equality in sports, do you have to be conscious of what
sports
are receiving the most attention on your site, i.e. lots of football
articles/posting versus articles on rowing?
Maintaining a level of equality on the website is tough. An important rule
that ND tries to follow is gender equality. We try to make sure and balance
everything we do. If we do live statistics for baseball, then we need to do
it for softball. If we offer live audio for women's soccer then we have to
strive to do it for the men's soccer team.
Football drives the majority of the revenue for the site and the athletic
department. It is what most people visit the site for and he we have seen
statistics in the past that support that. We do try to give the fans what
they want which is more coverage of football and basketball but also try and
give due coverage to the other lesser-known sport like rowing and fencing.
We try to take the die-hard football fans and introduce them to other sports
so they can support them as well.
9. Do you have any information as to how many hits the sports hotline gets? Do
you think that the hotline has any advantages over und.com in regards to the
distribution of information?
The traffic is less than 100 calls for certain
sports. UND.com registers millions of page views in a month. The one advantage is that the hotline allows
immediate access to scores for everyone. I don't know of many people that
don't have access to a telephone. Some people still don't have computers
with internet access at their homes. Still, they can sign-up to have scores
text-messaged to their cell phones.
