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The Daily Bruin is the winner of the annual Off the Block Best Men’s Volleyball Online Coverage of the Year for the first time in the award’s history.
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 and social media for men’s volleyball coverage.
Daily Bruin is the on-campus student-newspaper at UCLA. Assistant sports editor Claire Fahy and men’s volleyball beat reporter Tanner Walters led the newspaper in its coverage of the nationally-ranked Bruins.
Both reporters wrote about a combined 50 online articles, including numerous personality profiles about the UCLA players and in-depth game stories that had compelling quotes from coaches and players. Among some of the top articles from the Daily Bruin this season were Fahy’s personality profile story about outside attacker Christian Hessenauer overcoming injuries in high school to make the UCLA roster and Walters’ feature story about setter Eric Matheis working to get into the starting lineup.
A Daily Bruin article made the Off the Block top college men’s volleyball stories of the week list 13 times this season.
Beyond the articles, the Daily Bruin had a strong social media presence providing in-match tweeting every UCLA match. In addition, it published guest columns from a UCLA men’s volleyball player throughout the school year detailing life as a student-athlete.
The Daily Collegian (Penn State University) and Ka Leo (University of Hawai’i) were selected as finalists for the Off the Block Best Men’s Volleyball Online Coverage of the Year.
This is the fifth 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, while The Ball State Daily News (Ball State University) won the award in 2012.
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.