I do not want to go overboard here at this time and write too much or speak too much for Mr Allen but I will tell you we spoke a week ago Tuesday, he was kind enough to call me back after doing an interview, we spoke for about twenty minutes and it was a pleasure where I learned a lot.
I did send Mr Allen a long series of questions a week ago and it no doubt will be time consuming to answer. He wrote me the other day and told me not to give up on him, I responded and told him to take his time and do it when he can. When this is available I will post it here for everyone.
Without remembering everything word for word from ten days ago we discussed hockey coverage around the league and the process for joining the association, why I wanted to do this and gave my example of someone from a website who was a member of the association according to an old Islander website article.
For Mr Allen's part he told me joining the association is like joining the local school board where the local chapter sets many of the rules or standards and it can be years before someone is granted voting rights as a member of the association for awards.
In my case I told him of my experience/background writing about hockey and felt it would give my blog more legitimacy if it were considered professional. He did tell me not interviewing players would not work in my favor but sometimes exceptions are made.
We also spoke about some media changes with the exceptional writer in the Carolina Observer, Luke DeCock leaving the Canes coverage and I did a lot of talking about folks like Helen Elliott in Los Angeles and the lack of road coverage from so many papers.
What was somewhat surprising was Mr Allen credited how blogging is making huge strides and saw all of this as a positive and made a lot of great points on the subject while I was the one more on the side of the conservative way with standard professional reporting from Newspapers being the only credible media sources.
Mr Allen did a fine job and impressed me with his knowledge and what obviously is his love of hockey. He brought up something at the end of our conversation where he felt the tone has been so much more negative/harsh (not his exact wording) than it used to be twenty or so years ago in the media.
This did make an impression on me where afterward I thought about how often I am tough on Newsday or the other reporters in my space here but I also feel what I doing is ground breaking for our team and necessary at this time because there have been so many problems with the Islanders coverage in my estimation.
This is something I have kept in mind from day one writing this blog.
Anyway I just wanted to follow up here for everyone who has contacted me before the holiday weekend begins about this.
Unless something major breaks regarding the Islanders, have a great weekend or check the feeders all over the blog.
