People who gather statistical information and act as a buffer against the increasingly intense press. People who maintain the connections between sports and the media. Those people make up the CSUN Sports Information Network. We write a lot of press releases, and we do a lot of public relations. We have to be trained in journalism, but crisis management is sometimes also necessary.
Marketing sells things, whereas sports information provides the facts.
We build a trust with the media, and we solve p roblems, if there are any. Information gathering and distribution are not the easiest parts of the task. We need to expand into electronic media, but w e're working on that. In a move to expand its operational base, the Sports Information Network recently hired a number of student volunteers and they are looking to hire several more . Finney noted that most professionals working in the sports information field initially pay their dues as student volunteers, sometimes for several years, before moving up to stipend intern positions once they've been noticed.