Time For NYI To End Blog Box, Revoke All Amateur Media Credentials

Simply put it was a bad idea from the beginning that I felt was made up of good intentions at the time or I never would have sent the team an e-mail offering this website to be included to help them in October 2007. 

In retrospect it was the teams media relations giving up trying to get the Daily News, Post or Times to spend money on full time coverage. 

I made my suggestion on 5/8/2008 to have the team pay the writers to travel with the team on the road if that's what it took with it dismissed for countless reasons. By 12/5/2008 the same former media relations coordinator was calling for all NHL teams to host media on the road.

Whatever. So much for that enhanced Newsday coverage. (insert joke here)

I have written about my blog box involvement many times here from Nov 2007-May 2009 which is available for everyone to reference in the archives. Never was a free ticket or pass accepted (or anything else from the team) or did I ever sit in the box, that was my specific condition for being included.

Never received one e-mail telling me what to write by the team or that would have been posted here with a response to immediately take my link off the Islanders website.

Now it's time for the Islanders organization to correct it's mistake, and push the newspaper editors to spend their limited budget money assigning a full time beatwriter to cover the club with a daily updated blog like all other NHL teams.

No more blog box, no more amateur media credentials issued.

This team has a website to interview it's players, it has media relations people to sit down with newsppaer editors, and figure out a way to cover every single game.

No one is stopping amateur writers from writing on-line, but the days of a few of them having access inside the Nassau Coliseum or Barclay's Center should end.

Dan Martin, Peter Botte, Kevin Allen, John Rolfe, Phil Mushnick, Ben Hankinson, player agents all responded to my e-mails with the discussions posted here over the years.

I never asked the team for help or needed to be a blog box member to receive/send e-mails, no one does.

One item in one entry was edited about Peter Botte.  He contacted me about a game related mistake in an article he wrote that I pointed out, he said he had a family issue, and would appreciate it if I changed my entry so I did out of courtesy.

Yes, the same Peter Botte, who in 2014 is reduced to snarking the team on twitter at a paper who does not have the budget to assign a full time writer, while he lobs softballs at the laughingstock Knicks was that sensitive about things written on a blogger hosted website? 

Dan Martin asked me not to post our e-mail discussion. I did. 

Mike Sielski wrote, and said he could not answer my questions about his LaFontaine hit-job, then went to the Buffalo News to interview/sell himself with his mistake filled article.

Ending the blog box/amateur access should also end some of the amateurs with credentials from other outlets to invent so much sourced based gossip from other teams practice facilities about a New York Islander team, who's games those editors will not spend money to cover. 

All due respect to the blog box members, time to pay for tickets, no more access to locker room.

Contact players by e-mail ask for written interviews for your blogs/sites.

Anyone can read a newsppaer on-line with a direct quote and post it on a blog/website.

It's worked here since 2007, and before that since 2000.

Time for full time Newspaper coverage to return. There will never be an acceptable excuse for the cut of coverage to begin with. With no more amateur bloggers, excuses will be gone for no full time professional newspaper beatwriters when/if this franchise moves to the Barclay's Center beyond these publications own financial issues.