Islanders jump on blog train
Posted: Sunday, July 08, 2007 10:41 PM
This one comes courtesy of Bob Sullivan, who writes The Red Tape Chronicles for MSNBC.com and is relentless in exposing fraud and skullduggery in space both cyber and actual. As the subject involved hockey instead of a scam, it got forwarded around the office until it landed in my lap. (This is called the editorial process; at least that’s what I’m calling it.)
In what is apparently a first for a major sports team, the N.Y. Islanders are credentialing beat bloggers for the upcoming hockey season. Now, you can argue about how major a team and a league the Islanders and the NHL are, but I won’t join in. I’m a big hockey fan, and the Islanders are one of the few teams to win four consecutive Stanley Cups. In my book, that’s major.
The team is still interviewing candidates, so if you’re interested, here’s where to go. The bloggers won’t be paid, but the team is setting up a “blog box,” which apparently won’t be in the vicinity of the press box, which, as others have pointed out, is occupied largely by people trying to graduate to the Rangers’ beat.
Here’s how the Islanders put it on the Web site: “We will provide you with a media pass for a few games next season and a seat in the NYI BLOG BOX. You will also receive your own set of Game Notes when you enter the Coliseum Press Gate. All you have to do is bring your note pad and/or voice recorder and cheer as loudly as you want. After the game you attend, we will set up an area where you can toss a few questions at a coach or players, based on your requests and their availability.”
I guess the rule will be: “No not cheering in the blog box.”
I’m sure some of my print colleagues will look down their noses at these hybrid journalists. But a journalist is literally one who keeps a journal, which is a fancy name for a diary. So while the Islanders’ bloggers may not meet the professional definition of a journalist, they at least meet the literal definition.
One blog is already online, and you’ve got to check out the picture of its author, Jon Jordan, to see what the team is looking for – he’s dressed in an Islanders’ jersey and hugging a hockey stick, which isn’t your typical columnist’s mug shot. (We draw the line at goofy hats.) Jordan lives in Tampa, which will make it difficult for him to attend home games. He was pressed into action to write about the team’s signing of Rusian Fedotendo.
Anyway, the report he writes is straight from the home-team perspective. It’s also longer and has more depth than anything a newspaper would write about a player even a lot of fans know next to nothing about. Jordan is an English teacher – so says his bio – and he writes well.
I like the idea. Sure, the writers are going to be cheering their behinds off. But if the Isles let them write what they feel, that also means they’ll be critical when their team isn’t living up to expectations. They’ll also be writing to dedicated fans, and that’s all good.
The Islanders, like the Devils in New Jersey, live in the huge shadow of the Rangers. The local papers cover them, but even they give precedence to the Rangers. And the New York papers barely admit that either team is any closer to the Big Apple than Des Moines. Having home-team bloggers with their own little blog box won’t change the amount of coverage in the regular media, but it will give fans something they weren’t getting before – people who actually care.
You can bet that other teams in other sports will be watching how the experiment goes. This is an initiative that is going spread. It’s too good an idea not to.
