Over the last eight and a half years, the Media & News teams at the OU Department of Esports Co-Curricular and Innovation have blossomed into something never seen before in collegiate esports. Our contributors have come from many majors and academic colleges across the University of Oklahoma, but at their core, they have all been journalists.
These students have created game reviews and analyses. They have covered events, teams, and gaming news of all kinds. They have let their opinions and perspectives be known–on representation, sustainability, DLCs, and more.
The Media & News teams within OU Esports are truly one of a kind as a journalistic entity that works from within a collegiate esports department.
So, why are we the only ones?
Creating a media and news program is hard work. Even in my four years at the University of Oklahoma, I have seen both the media and news sides independently fight back from the edge of destruction. One bad semester of recruitment was enough to thin the ranks, and without students, the quality and quantity of the work suffers.
The work doesn’t stop at simply writing articles or making videos. You need marketing, SEO knowledge and graphic design to get your articles known and read. Our website, Sooneresports.org, is a fragile and customized ecosystem of article design that some days feels as if it will crumble to dust.
Within the ever-revolving door that is college, it can take time to develop a structure and workflow that is both prestigious and sustainable. Unlike our friends over at OU Daily, though, we haven’t had a hundred years to get this right.
We’ve had eight and a half.
But the struggle doesn’t mean those eight and a half years haven’t been worth it. Between the difficult days have been sparks of success. Last semester, we were near an article-per-week rate, and this semester we’re ending my tenure with more articles than I know what to do with. We’ve had a Broadcast Education Awards winner within the ranks of OU Esports, and our bond with the Gaylord College of Journalism and Mass Communication is stronger than ever.
As I look at this success on the eve of my graduation, though, there is one thing that I worry about: alone, we will soon reach a ceiling.
Though many areas of our world understand student journalism, there isn’t a space within esports and gaming culture that currently embraces students. Call it introversion or the novelty of gaming relative to most areas of journalism, it doesn’t matter. The result is the same.
There are a lot of people out there who have no idea how to react to a student-led esports publication and a lot of companies who do not have their public relations structured for it.
If we can continue to say “there’s only ONE” in the realm of student esports journalism, that will never change. The potential of our students will never be fully realized, and professional esports journalism will eventually lose a pipeline of journalism students who have true experience in the nuances of article and video production in the realm of gaming culture.
And that’s exactlywhy I want other esports programs to start their own media and news programs.
We do have a diversity of perspectives in the Media & News team here, but we all have one thing in common: we are students at the University of Oklahoma. What could the topics of our articles have turned into if we were from Syracuse University, Ohio State University or Stanford University? How would the unique experiences of our schools change the way we view the world?
The voices of those who have had those different experiences are exactly what we need. The more perspectives that are explored in esports and gaming journalism, the better everyone will be. More students will become versed in communication and reports in arts, culture, technology, sports and more all within the common topic of gaming.
The development of students should always be the core of everything created at the university level, but I can’t act as if the esports programs can’t benefit themselves. Any school can excel at competition, but that doesn’t matter if no one knows about it. Sponsors won’t invest their money and product if they don’t physically see any results come from it.
Journalism is storytelling, and good media and news programs are the ones that wield the tools to bring the stories of an esports department to the light. These student journalists know how to make people care about these topics.
And if you’re worried about not being able to recruit enough students who want to work specifically in esports journalism? Then you need to think broader. Of course, we’ve had some students end up in esports journalism or even in the more general category of arts and culture journalism, but most have not.
I’ve been the coordinator of the team for a year and a half, and I’m not even going into journalism at all. But my work has prepared me for my career, and I don’t think it’s an exaggeration to say that some potential employers were impressed when I brought up my work with the program in interviews.
In the end, I think it’s a pretty great deal for any collegiate esports space. You can develop students in journalism and beyond, make people care about your program, and help carve a bigger place for students in esports and gaming journalism.
So, I must ask again, why are we the only ones? After eight and a half years, why doesn’t OU Esports have peers at other universities?
Whatever your reasons for hesitation, I don’t know if I have the answers. All I can say is to take the risk. OU Esports and the amazing students on the Media & News team have carved a path. Due to the collective past eight and a half years of progress, other programs don’t have to completely reinvent the wheel.
It won’t be easy. There will be times when you may wonder if the investment will result in anything.
