The Blogging vs Professional Media issue again

New York Islander Fan Central | 10/25/2008 07:56:00 AM |
Sporting News: Craig Custance's blog entry had a lot more on the blogging vs professional media issue with Professional Hockey writers association President Kevin Allen, NHL's vice president of media relations Frank Brown while Mr Custance writes about the many markets where professional media coverage is declining.

Mr Custance article centers around why an Edmonton Oiler amateur blogger was removed from a press box recently because of a live chat.

NYI Fan Central Comments:
First off high marks to Kevin Allen for being consistent and writing exactly what he told me by telephone and in an exclusive interview that was released here last month.

Too many days I feel like I may be the only blogger in North America who understands the boundaries between professional media vs bloggers which is why you only see links to professional writers or team affiliated website employees in the daily news entries here.

For a new concept such as blogging NYIFC is very old fashion and conservative in how information is presented here. I think our way is the correct way even though it goes against the grain of what most bloggers do as those folks go for the page view with the funny picture with as much sensationalism as they can pack into an entry to keep you coming back for more.

I did one blog with funny pictures in about fifteen hundred entries since last summer and after it was released I felt a day later it was a mistake and not what NYIFC is supposed to be about, never again.

NYIFC goes out of it's way to make sure our readers only see what we consider professional hockey writers content as I have often blogged about standards and credentials used in making these decisions.

Mr Custance unfortunately even needed the amateur blogger here to fill out his story with most of those sites I almost never have linked to NYIFC main blog content at a point I was not sure if it was professional or not. One site was even removed from our page list this week entirely because of one bloggers outright lack of professionalism.

All I will write about the Oiler blog was good for Frank Brown pointing out a site/blog with profanity in it's content/reader responses has no place anywhere. First time in well over a decade I have agreed with Frank Brown on anything since he left the Daily News.

Regarding Mr Custance comments that hockey bloggers are quick to publicly attack traditional journalists about everything from the amount of coverage to perceived biases unfortunately the New York Islanders are fighting circumstances no other team in this league is fighting on virtually every possible media level.

I did not see Chicago, Tampa, St Louis, Rangers, Los Angeles and a lot of other clubs that have not even had the Islanders marginal success take anything close to what our team has in terms of media criticism as those clubs struggled for years with countless poor decisions.

I looked in the newspapers for those clubs along with the national media and did not find the same attacks we link to about the Islanders that have done a great job tarnishing our franchise and contributing to public perception and folks who purchase tickets to games.

This places NYIFC in the very unhappy position of having to constantly ask very tough questions of the media I only wish did not have to be written about so often.

Team officials now and in the past have asked some of these same questions as Cory Witt did this summer when the Newsday-Yashin retraction was buried in the paper after the damage was done and as Mr Botta did in April 2006 when he called out Alan Hahn and Newsday's overall coverage.

Mr Botta recently wrote our fans should ignore some of the blogs in Newsday.

I disagree with this because I do not feel our fans should settle for anything but the best of coverage determined on how the club performs, nothing less and certanily not misinformation from Johnette Howard that could not even be factually correct in it's basic content.

I also do not consider it an attack on the local media to question why the only paper with an Islander blog was outworked by the beatwriter covering the other team in the same paper last season by about a five to one ratio. The sports editor at Newsday Hank Winnicki should be the first one who saw this problem and attempted to make up the coverage gap the other papers are not giving the Islanders in the city.

Unfortunately I seem to be one of the only blogs asking these questions.







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