New Editor and Chief

Ch. 4 Exercise 3

A website I visit more often than most is the NCAA Woman's Volleyball page. Since I was an athlete for the majority of my life, it was a hard reality when I decided not to play in college. I chose to keep up with the volleyball world by staying up to date with following Instagram accounts and checking on the NCAA website often. The sport is dear to my heart but as the 'new chief editor' for the NCAA Woman's Volleyball page, I chose to look at the website from a critic's viewpoint and not a consumer. 

First, let's start with the way the NCAA editors alter their writing for their various sports pages. The website is an informative news outlet for all collegiate level sports and it is written in an unbiased tone that educated its' readers. The 'voice' is generalized for all audiences, and not written in a preference tone. It's open for any individual, with no restrictions on accessing the information on updates or stats on a team. From coaches to parents, and younger kids dreaming of becoming a division athlete one day, the NCAA Woman's Volleyball page effectively portrays its' vision of updating and informing. The site organized and thoroughly structured to cater to each sport with an informative writing tone. 

For the Woman's Volleyball page, the editors specifically use photos and bold printing to draw in the eye of viewers to specific material. The use of hyperlinks and drop-down menus are also a big plus in keeping the page running smoothly and allowing tabs to separate information.   

Navigating the site is fairly easy and straight to the point. The editors squeeze in an enormous amount of news updates without making the pages look cluttered or too messy. It incorporates the term 'easy access' to top college game scores by structuring the page with hyperlinks at the very top of its' site. It is a very effective tool when placed in the proper location in order to catch the reader's attention, and serves its purpose as a short cut. The website also encourages its' audience to interact with content featured on the home page of the site by posting videos with exciting headlines that hook first-time readers.

By using different tools like drop-down menus, arrows that hyperlink to another page, and pictures all help in structurally organizing the page to look clean and not messy. These visuals collectively help incorporate the consistency of a fresh-looking page in order to balance the ratio of text and not have the website be one enormous essay. The format of the Woman's Volleyball page was very well thought out and notably edited for untroublesome navigation. 

The quality of content displayed by the Woman's Volleyball home page is simple and exceptionally short. The homepage has flexibility to expand its material through hyperlinks. By doing so, it cuts out the possibility of a cluttered home volleyball page.

Despite the organized layout, the website's overall color scheme could use a pop. If I were an editor for not only the Woman's Volleyball page but also the NCAA website as a whole, I would specialize each individual sports page's background so that it differs from looking like a boring home page. Nothing too distracting, but I would replace the white background with the NCAA blue to show more color. 

The NCAA covers material from every sport offered to division athletes and they do it well. I can only imagine the type of extreme editing that is involved in creating and publishing new content for their website. None the less, I feel as though the NCAA Woman's Volleyball home page meets and goes above expectations for a website.